We Are Not Alike But We Are One

Yesterday, I made the trip from my home in southeast Louisiana to a meeting in Alexandria, Louisiana, which is right in the middle of the state. It was a beautiful day, and I enjoyed the drive.

From the land of Live Oaks and Spanish Moss I crossed the Mississippi River in Baton R0uge and then drove through swamps and one of the biggest rivers no one knows–the Atchafalaya River (inexplicably pronounced Cha-fa-lie). The Atchafalaya is where the Mississippi River would go on its own. Years ago the federal government put a dam of sorts up river to keep the port of New Orleans viable.

My trip took me past oil fields and more swamps. I also saw abundant farm land. Corn, sugar cane and cotton were being planted. What had been crawfish farms have now been drained so that they can be what they were originally–rice farms. I couldn’t get over the size of the fields. I remarked to Martha that farmers in my home area in Alabama would be envious of such large fields.

When I arrived at our conference, one of the preachers talked about the farmers in his church in north Louisiana and what they are planting now.

The more I thought about all this the more I realized how different baptist churches are in our relatively small state. For example, my St. Tammany Parish grows beautiful pine and live oaks and has many beautiful horse farms but is not known for farming.

In my relatively large church, I don’t know of anyone who farms. We have people with fruit orchards but no row crops.

North Louisiana and South Louisiana have always been different, but we all have something in common.

We all owe our lives to the Lord Jesus Christ. We worship the same Lord and receive guidance, wisdom, and power from the same Spirit. We have the same goal of helping other people know Christ. We are quite unified.

In short, our unity comes from who God is instead of who we are or where we came from. It’s all about Him and what He wants.

The early church was the same way. They were Jew and Gentile, religious and irreligious. They were from different areas and spoke different languages, yet they were one people in Christ who changed the world.

They were known by their love for one another and their love for a lost world.

We can do the same.

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