oneness

I'm working my way slowly through Bruce Milne's "Know the Truth" (still!). Today I was touched by this beautiful quote on oneness in his chapter on The Church. I was inspired to create the image above, and I'll add it also in text form here:

On oneness:

Today this ‘mark’ of the church at the local level has taken on both new challenges and new possibilities. The challenges arise from the massive levels of diversification which mark global society. Driven by massive international migrations, spawned in many cases by wars and ethnic conflicts, hundreds of millions have abandoned their roots and set out to find new lands in which to live and raise their families. This is a commonplace for urban dwellers in every country. Patently this creates a huge new challenge for local churhes everywhere, to break out from the stifling and increasingly irrelevant chains of churches built solely from ‘people like us’, and dare to believe that God can by his Spirit create new communities of faith from the bewildering diversity of those who live around our doors and people our sidewalks. But this diversified context is also replete with exciting new possibilities. Here is a call to our local congregations to become by the Spirit prophetic communities, centres of reconciliation, bridging places, families of love, where the threatening divisions and polarities of our surrounding neighbourhoods and communities are overcome in the 

name and by the power of Jesus Christ, for his greater glory.