UNITY

RELATED INDEX TOPICS: Fellowship, Arguments, Peace, Friendship, Hate, Love for Others

         1. Living the Christian life in relationship to others is very much like formation flying. You have your eye on the Leader (Jesus Christ), but you must always fly (your life) with your relationship to others in "plane" view. Like flying, both your well-being & theirs depend upon this kind of mutual concern for one another. The formation is large, & purely individualistic stunting can make quick shambles of it. Take your eyes off the Leader & those around you, & you are already on your way to trouble.

         2. In Christ there is no East nor West,
         In Him no South nor North,
         But one great fellowship of Love
         Throughout the whole wide earth.

         In Him shall true hearts everywhere
         Their high communion find;
         His Service is the golden cord
         Close binding all mankind.

         3. A preacher talked to the children about making & flying kites. He quoted some lines about kite-flying. Here they are:
         Who flies the kite?
         "I," said the boy; "it is my joy;
         I fly the kite."

         Who flies the kite?
         "I," said the wind; "it is my whim,
         I fly the kite."

         Who flies the kite?
         "I," said the string, "I am the thing
         That flies the kite."

         Who flies the kite?
         "I," said the tail, "I make it sail;
         I fly the kite."

         Who flies the kite?
         All are wrong; all are right;
         All fly the kite.

         Now belonging to God's true Church is like that. Paul says the Church is like a body, with hands & feet, & eyes & ears & nose, & it takes every one of these parts, & more, to make a body. In the Church there are Apostles & Prophets & Evangelists & Pastors & Teachers, & there is YOU. Jesus needs every one of us to do His Work, & each must play his part. Don't forget--all fly the kite.

         4. Nothing does so much harm to the cause of Christ as the quarrels of Christians.

         5. If you think it doesn't pay to stick together, consider the banana. As soon as it leaves the bunch it gets skinned!

         6. Evil flourishes because the good people allow their differences to divide them instead of allowing the things on which they agree to unite them.

         7. As Christians, we should always work "heart-to-heart" even though we do not always see things "eye-to-eye."

         8. There is in South India a story of a wealthy landowner who had some very quarrelsome sons, always jealous of one another & always at strife among themselves. On his deathbed he called them & divided his property among them. Then he called for some sticks to be brought, nicely tied into a bundle, & asked them one by one, beginning at the eldest, to break the bundle. So long as they were thus closely bound together, they could not break any of the sticks. "Now," he said to the eldest, "untie the bundle, & try to break the sticks singly." This was not difficult, & soon each of the sticks, broken one by one, lay before them in two pieces.
         The father thus taught them that--united they stood: divided they fell.

         9. Life is not a solo but a chorus. We live in relationships from cradle to grave.

         10. The Devil's master stroke is that of dividing forces that ought to stand together.

         11. No one can whistle a symphony. It takes an orchestra to play it.

         12. If you don't think cooperation is necessary, watch what happens to a wagon if one wheel comes off.

         13. You'll find that the big potatoes are on top of the heap because there are a lot of little potatoes holding them up.

         14. We cannot all play the same instrument, but we can all be in the same key.

         15. The family that PRAYS together, STAYS together. The family that TALKS together, WALKS together. The family that SINGS together, CLINGS together.

         16. When they founded America, they didn't just dump a bunch of colonists on the shore & say, "All right now, go out & try to win the Indians' territory. Everybody go out & do his own thing & we hope you take over the country!"--Because if they had, the Indians would still be in control; they would have picked them off, one by one, & the Colonists wouldn't have known what they were doing. But they built fortresses; they built colonies. They stuck together. They worked together. They fought together. And they survived together. If they'd tried to go out & build their cabins in the wilds, all alone, the guys who tried that got massacred & murdered. And let me tell you, in the hostile territory that we're going into--in this day & age--throughout the World, if we don't stick together, we're apt to get the same!--Dad

         17. Unity must be according to God's Holy Word, or else it were better war than peace.