Today’s Scripture: I Corinthians 3:18-23
18 Stop deceiving yourselves. If you think you are wise by this world’s standards, you need to become a fool to be truly wise. 19 For the wisdom of this world is foolishness to God. As the Scriptures say,
“He traps the wise
in the snare of their own cleverness.
20 And again,
“The Lord knows the thoughts of the wise;
he knows they are worthless.”
21 So don’t boast about following a particular human leader. For everything belongs to you— 22 whether Paul or Apollos or Peter, or the world, or life and death, or the present and the future. Everything belongs to you, 23 and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Today’s Devotional
This is a passage about unity – the fact that everything is connected, and everything is united. I think it’s the kind of passage we need these days.
The members of the Corinthian church were doing their best to NOT be unified. They had gotten to the point where they were dividing themselves into groups based on which human leader they followed. Each group thought they were the wise ones and the others were off the rails.
Paul reminds them (and us!) that what we think is wise is pretty foolish. He then goes on to point out that it does not matter which human leader we follow – because everything is unified in Christ. The leaders, the world, your life, your death, the past, the preset, the future: everything is part of a whole – and that whole belongs to Christ and Christ belongs to God.
We (and the Corinthians) are the foolish ones for dividing things up when in fact everything is unified. All of our differences are actually just false measurements created by us.
Let’s try and keep this in mind as we move through a week that is sure to highlight our division instead of our unity. Remind yourself that we are part of each other – connected to each other – unified with all. This is the truth that will heal division. This is the truth that will set us free.
Today’s Prayer
God we do such a great job identifying differences but not we totally fail in seeing how everything is connected and unified in you. Remind us this week that we are not independent agents. Remind us that even though we have so many differences, we are all connected. Give us the eyes to see that connection.
Amen
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