Today's Devotional
June 19, 2009
Subject: The Message Of Reconciliation
2 Corinthians 5:16-19 "So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation."
I've got kind of mixed feelings on something I see happening. There is an entire organization that has been established to attempt to make the third Saturday in June a national holiday. This holiday would be for "Juneteenth" and serve as an observance to the end of slavery in the United States. The organization's website says that it would stand as a symbol of racial reconciliation. That may be their intent but I'm not so sure that I see a whole lot of racial reconciliation in this country.
Most of the talk I hear these days on issues of race is more divisive than it is reconciling. While we could establish a holiday to celebrate the end of slavery in the United States, I really believe that we should be putting more effort into reconciliation itself. Why don't we have "Reconciliation Day." It would be a day where everyone in our country would come together across ethnic, racial and color lines and agree that we will all personally commit to live without animosity or prejudice towards others. We could then establish some goals to that end.
Of course all of that is a secular endeavor. On the spiritual front, we as Christians should be doing that every day already. The scripture above has given us the command to live so as not to "regard others from a worldly point of view." That's how we got into this whole slavery mess and the terrible racism that persists across the spectrum of peoples and races today. Therefore the answer will not be secular, but spiritual. It will happen when those who have been committed to the ministry of reconciliation, start living that way and that means you and me.
Today as Juneteenth is celebrated around the country, let's celebrate the message of reconciliation that God has given us and let us begin to live like we know it.
Carlen
