Day 042: Customs

"Therefore let us pursue the things which make for peace and the things by which one may edify another.  Do not destroy the work of God for the sake of food.  All things indeed are pure, but it is evil for the man who eats with offense."  Romans 14:19-20

The history of the Church is quite dismal, to say the very least.  On the one hand, it has spread beyond the borders of the Holy Land to most of the earth; but on the other hand, it has seen so many fractures that we can't keep track of all the different traditions and factions.  There are some that claim to have heritage all the way to the first days of the apostolic church, denouncing all other traditions as simple heresies.  But, in reality, all of our denominations can be traced back to the apostolic church.

Of course, this dispute can be taken to the secular world as well, where we are constantly afraid of those who speak a different language, or those who are a different color, or those who wear different clothes.  But even this secular worldly fear breaks into our churches as well, for such a denial or dismissal of the others is a way that we destroy the work of God.

God is the only one who has constantly been bringing all of creation together.  God called people to join in the family by living holy lives.  God sent Jesus to unite people with a common message of faith and love.  But our taking of the reigns has been our downfall.

So much of the Church's history is riddled with grudges, some held for over a thousand years.  But we are called to turn away from all of that.  We are called to unity.  Unity is something that we can achieve only if we put aside our prejudices and start trying to learn more about and understand the others around us.

During this Lent, we should remember to reach out to the world around us, so that many more can understand our relationship with God.  We also should go out of our way to learn about new traditions.  There are many denominations that observe Lent, and there are some which are observing it starting next month.  There is so much we can learn around us, and that brings up the central point of our faith: that Jesus is revealing himself to us in so many different ways.  If we learn to accept that Jesus is not reserved for just one kind of person, we can learn so much more about Jesus and strengthen our relationship with him.