Diversity and unity

Last night, on the One Show, there was a piece about received pronunciation versus regional accents. Years ago, the BBC used people with received pronunciation to unite the country. Today, regional accents are used to emphasise and reflect the diversity in the country, and now this emphasis on diversity is manifesting itself in worrying ways - people are aligning themselves with very narrow single-issue pressure groups. So you have a fragmentation of the UK (and many other countries) into smaller regions, and pressure groups for all kinds of things: preferred sexuality, anti-vivisection, for every different ethnic group and so on.

In the church, we recognise our differences but are deeply united as one body.

So, in 1 Corinthians, we acknowledge that, as male & female we are different, but we are one as God the Father, Son & Holy Spirit is One. We are rich & poor, but we are one body of Christ. We have different gifts, but they are given by the one Spirit. We have different ministries, but serve one Lord Jesus. We do different tasks, but one God empowers us for them. (1 Cor 12:4-6).

All of this is a manifestation of God's nature - he is three and he is one. And our way of reflecting that should be a light to an increasingly divided nation.