Community Balance

Community balance is a phrase I have been using to describe the coming together of people with diverse viewpoints into a community of trust between them that nurtures peace. I hold up to you the Community of Christ church seal. It shows the contrasting image of the lion, lamb and little boy together. This reflects diversity in what we would consider extreme circumstances. Certainly a ferocious lion with a meek lamb and an innocent and unaware child would never be considered compatible circumstances the world around. How incredible that this imagery from Isaiah adopted as our visible brand identity at our inception as a church speaks so completely to today's prophetic call for peace simultaneously with a recognition that diversity is good.

In this portrayal of peace, the lion in all its majestic beauty is affirmed, and we are awed by its pronounced differences that make the lion that which it was created to be. The lamb too is affirmed as it always was and in its vulnerability punctuates the incomprehensible vastness of peace to span creation. The child, perhaps the portrayal of our protected self identity (what would be more protected than our child) in the midst of diversity, is offered up to lie together in peace with that which is different from ourselves. That image is held before us as our ultimate portrayal of God's will on earth as it is in heaven. It is our prophetic calling as a church to be instruments of peace to bring this reality to pass. We are inching our way towards that envisioned time. Can it be now? Our recent words of counsel from conference speak of the diversity of creation and really how we are still naive in our understanding of creation's diversity application in our own world of relationships and interactions one with another. Diversity is good. We know God in Genesis looked upon his creation and exclaimed almost with surprising awe..... That creation was good! affirming the inherent worth and value and distinctiveness of each created entity within the spheres of  our created existence. What joy God sensed fully in the birthing of this marvellous reality he beheld.

Our vast array of differences is a mosaic of beauty that perceived in the light of God's created intent is a blessed and sacred and peaceful sacrament of life. Created life in all its breadth of forms and variations interacting with unconditional love becomes the sacrament of peace in our midst.

So what does this mean? Every one of us is different in more ways than we can possibly conceive. We can choose conflict or peace as those differences are recognized in one another! When we encounter another, in that moment, that very moment, in the blink of an eye is precisely the instant when we each can choose to be divine......to be virtuous, meaning we choose to embody compassion and love. Our hope becomes fulfilled, our souls are filled with joy and peace is the name that defines life lived as it was created to be. A balanced community is a peaceful community.

Submitted by Kerry