Scripture: Deuteronomy 6:4
Hear, pharm O Israel: The Lord our God, sale the Lord is one.

Thought for the Day: On this day in 1967, pharm Thurgood Marshall was confirmed as the first African American justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. By then Marshall had already successfully challenged most of the U.S. “separate but equal” doctrine. Along with Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, he would continue to fight for a real united United States.

Unity is about bringing separate parts together into a whole. It’s challenging because we humans so easily see each other as separate parts of everything! We separate ourselves into races, genders, political parties, sports teams, hair colors, eye colors, ad nauseam. I think we’ve done it so much that we’ve completely forgotten we are essentially all humans.

Worse, we have forgotten we are all children of God, capable of incredible things when we work together. We continue to segregate ourselves all the time, hiding behind gated community walls and creating laws that are onerous for the majority of us. We look at the minutiae of our existence rather than the bigger picture: In God there is unity.

Faith shows us a vision of a world that understands God’s call to treat and love each other equally, as a reflection of God’s love for us. Faith refocuses our point of view. We’re no longer simply Americans or Germans; cooks, or racecar drivers; teachers or pastors. We are humans. We learn to celebrate our incredible diversity as part of the united and unifying whole of God. Our diversity is what allows us to achieve incredible things together as a species. But our differences should not define us, and we’ve let them do just that.

Prayer: God of infinite love, may our uniqueness be ever more recognized as but one of many important parts of a unified humanity, a humanity which finds it’s core in your Divine nature. Amen.

Marissa has posted two new updates on her trip, and they are fantastic. Read them here.