The Color of Unity

Julian Reese led a youth choir for the Martin Luther King, Jr. service at St. John's church in Amarillo yesterday.  He had invited our youth to participate and they did--for the two rehearsals and then the event.  There were also some kids from an Hispanic church who participated.  The name of the program was "The Color of Unity."  It was my first time to participate with an African American church for a Martin Luther King, Jr. event.  It was a great idea and I'm grateful we were invited.

I came away from the service knowing something.  We are never going to have true unity until we come together.  We can appreciate one another from afar...but how can there be unity if we're never together?  The same is true with denominations.  I may say I love my brothers who are Methodist, Holiness, or Church of Christ...but if we never come together, how does that even resemble unity?

"Behold, I am doing a new thing.  Now it springs forth; do you not perceive it and will you not give heed to it?  I will even make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." Isa. 43:19  It's time to come together, worship together, learn from one another, bless one another, forgive one another.  I know there have been some great movements to try to do this...like Promise Keepers.  But I think it's going to happen when two or three churches at a time determine we're going to come together to understand one another and walk together in agreement.  To do that, we're going to have to lay down distrust and come with hearts wide open ready to forgive and demolish offenses...one at a time.

“We Shall Overcome”

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,

We shall overcome someday.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome someday.

The truth will make us free, the truth will make us free,

The truth will make us free someday,

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome someday.

We’ll walk hand in hand, we’ll walk hand in hand,

We’ll walk hand in hand someday.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome someday.

We are not afraid, we are not afraid,

We are not afraid today.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome someday.

The truth will make us free, the truth will make us free,

The truth will make us free someday,

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome someday.

We shall overcome, we shall overcome,

We shall overcome someday.

Oh, deep in my heart, I do believe,

We shall overcome someday.

We shall know the truth and the truth will set us free.  For true unity to take place, we have to come to the One Source--Jesus Christ.  And his one desire before he died was that we should be one as He and His Father were one.  Jesus Christ,  his death on the cross for our sins, and his resurrection to new life is our common denominator.  And it should propel us to find unity with our brothers and sisters of different color, different denominations, and different countries.  That's the Color of Unity.