How are you doing with murder today? Pretty good? How about your anger? Maybe not as good? I won’t even ask about the name calling you’ve done. But maybe it’d be good to check in on that? What labels have you placed on people this last week? Here are some examples: conservative/liberal, woke/racist, millennial/boomer, sheep, ignorant, moron, etc. Is name calling the same as murder? No. Is it on the same spectrum? Yes. Jesus takes this spectrum very seriously and calls his followers to rise above that spectrum all together to be a community of reconciliation in a world of discord and division. How important is it to Jesus that his followers become a community of reconciliation? He says that reconciliation is more important than the worship you bring before God. This is the lesson in a nutshell, but I want to dig in a bit more.

Ted Talk I mentioned - “The Danger of a Single Story,” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie