Diversity

Cole and I recently decided that we were going to take on a 31 day prayer challenge for our children. I found a calendar on Pinterest to guide us through the 31 days of prayer and we are working through it. So today, the theme for prayer was "diversity." I studied and prayed over Galatians 3:28 to go along with this theme.

²⁸ There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.

As I read and prayed over the scripture for the boys, I was struck by the significance that I felt while reading and praying. I can honestly say that I have never prayed for diversity for the boys. I pray that they will know Jesus, that they will be protected, that they will be feel loved, accepted and safe. I pray for their future spouses, big decisions they will make, and careers..but diversity? Never! Then, the reality of our current situation sunk in. We are in nothing if not a diverse situation right now. Everywhere we look there are people who look, sound, and talk different than we do. Of course this is true throughout the city, but it is particularly true for us at church. There are people from all over the world who attend ICCG. People come from all different cultures, speak many different languages, have different accents and colors. Thinking and praying through this this morning really moved me.

Diversity is not something that I am really too familiar with. I grew up in a small town where most people and families seemed the same (at least from the outside looking in). For the most part, we all went to similar churches, thought in similar ways about things, and went to the same high school. A lot of people stay in or around the town where I grew up. FYI...I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't do much for finding diversity either. The same is true for my college experience. I went to a small christian university where, again, it was not really that diverse. Of course there was more diversity than where I grew up, but there wasn't much that was earth shattering, and it was very easy to find people similar to me. After Cole and I got married, we moved to England for a short expat assignment. That assignment was VERY hard for me! People and things were very different than what I was used to. Instead of trying to embrace our situation, I became very closed off. I didn't do much to try to get involved in our community. We found a little church that we attended while we were there, but we didn't really get to know people or try to engage. When we left to go back home, we didn't feel like we were leaving anyone or anything because we hadn't given ourselves really at all. I'm ashamed to say that I can't even remember the name of the church or any of the people we met while we were there. When we returned back to the U.S. and moved south, we immediately began looking for people who were similar to us in thinking and lifestyle. It was easy to find that and we eventually found ourselves very comfortable in the midst of a great church and small group.

In my opinion, that in and of itself is not necessarily bad, but it's very easy. It's easy to gravitate towards people who are similar to you. Who live like you and think like you. Who look like you and talk like you. It's very easy to do that. In fact, we have even found ourselves drawn to other Americans that we have found here. It's easy! The danger in that is that it's also very easy to look down on or brush off those who are different than you. I am amazed at how God has changed my view of this in the short time we have been in Gent. We have been so incredibly blessed by people who are very different from us. We have been loved and embraced by the people at International Community Church Gent (ICCG) and are constantly in awe of how God has been working through this adventure here.

If I'm being honest, it was hard for me to want to attend ICCG when we first arrived. It's different than what I'm used to and different can make me uncomfortable. But despite our differences...our cultures, our languages, our heritage, how we grew up, how we're used to worshipping, etc., we are all connected eternally through Jesus Christ. And we worship together. Despite our differences, we find a way to put aside our selfish desires of what we're used to or want to come together and worship the One who is greater than all of that. The diversity that we have found here has opened my eyes to so much of the selfishness in my own heart and mind when thinking about church and what our purpose is in the church. It's helped me work through my issues about attending a church that is so different than what I'm used to. It's helped me be able to worship alongside a fellow believer, even if we don't agree on every issue that we (as people) choose to argue about...politics, music, marriage, traditional church, relevant church, etc. When we make church about anything more than the gospel, we are spoiling it and making our desires more important than the gospel.

I am so thankful that God has placed this on my heart and is working to change how I feel about embracing and worshipping with people who are different than me. I'm also thankful that the boys have a chance to witness, first hand, how people can love each other and worship together, despite differences that might arise. You can bet that I am going to add diversity to my prayer list for the boys. I can see how important it is to be able to see past our differences and look to the fact that we are a body of believers connected through Jesus Christ. I hope that, with God's grace, Cole and I can be a good example of this for the boys. They need to be able to see what's truly important. Thankfully, we will have lots of opportunities to practice this as a family with church, school, and everyday life!