Showing posts with label love. Show all posts
Showing posts with label love. Show all posts

June 28, 2025

Learning to Love the Whole Body of Christ


Losing any part of the human body causes pain and the subsequent adjustments needed to compensate. The more body parts lost, the greater the pain and time needed to cope. And yet, over the centuries, this very loss has happened to the Body of Christ.

Some Christians get distrustful of attempts to reconcile or reassemble, and I once fell into that wary category too, but the Lord had something else in mind. As God-incidence would have it, various job transfers gave my family the opportunity to get to know almost every denomination: Evangelical, Fundamental, Pentecostal, Orthodox, and Liturgical.

With each move, we looked for a church home where we felt the presence of the Lord, and, with each change, we learned to love yet another part of Christ’s Body on earth.

Initially, for instance, hymn lyrics and tunes were a priority, which encouraged singing praises and words of faith – still remembered decades later. Another church home emphasized Scripture, taking us through the whole Bible in three years or less and helping us to recognize God’s purpose and perspective from Genesis through Revelation.

Other churches focused on the Holy Spirit, making us aware of God’s desire to live with us and within us, today and forever, whereas Liturgical denominations filled us with appreciation for God’s creation through prayer, poetry, and art.

Do you see how each part of the Body has a place, a purpose, and something to add to the whole?

God loves all of His children! As we make an effort to understand where our siblings in Christ are coming from, we begin to realize we have the same Heavenly Father, the same Savior and Lord, and that our differences are primarily personal preferences and gift we’re given – gifts mean to be shared to edify the whole Church.

Even if we don’t feel comfortable visiting a church without an invitation or a member to accompany us, we can get to know denominations with which we’re not familiar by investigating their denominational websites and focusing on what we have in common.

With God’s help, we can pull ourselves together and do whatever we can to bridge our differences, make peace, and repair the breach. What a positive and powerful impact the whole Body of Christ on earth will make on our troubled world.

 

Mary Harwell Sayler

 

A few of many relevant Scriptures:

Romans 12:5, “Though many, we are one body in Christ, and individual members of one another.”

Colossi an 3:15, “Let the peace of Christ govern your hearts for to you were called to be members of one body.”

Ephesians 4:16, “Christ makes the whole body fit and united through the support of every joint. Every part does a job, so the body grows and is built up in love.”

 

September 17, 2021

How To Go Around Imitating God

 

Each morning I receive an email from Bible Gateway with the verse for the day. After reading various translations on the site, I then select one to post on Twitter, but today’s verse threw me:

 

“Imitate God like His own dear children,” Ephesians 5:1, and I thought, “How can I possibly do that?”

 

I went on to other things that needed tending, but the verse kept coming to mind. When I finally sat down to give it more thought, the creation story in Genesis came to mind.

 

As we follow this first biblical passage about God, we find these first steps toward imitating God:

 

Be creative.

Be a peacemaker, a problem solver. Bring order from chaos.

Be light, and bring light to others.

Be a caretaker of the environment, starting where we are.

Be a protector of animals.

Be aware that all peoples come from the same Creator God, even if they don’t know it.

Be respectful of others and yourself.

Be in constant communion with God.

Be ready to work and ready to rest.

Be Love, Beloved.


 

©2021, Mary Sayler

 

February 13, 2012

Writing in Bible love

As Valentine’s Day approaches, Christian poets and writers have a blessed opportunity to write about love from God’s perspective, which has far greater substance than romantic notions and fuzzy feelings. This biblical view of love remains constant, year-round, so, Lord willing, I’ll be addressing What the Bible Says about Love with appropriate scriptures, prayers, and short devotionals for private use or discussions in your Bible study group.

For example, the posting “The Bible Defines Love” discussed “the love chapter,” I Corinthians 13, reminding me of a poem Sandy Brooks accepted several years ago for Cross & Quill, the newsletter of the former Christian Writers Fellowship International (CWFI) for which she and I both served as directors.


Taking A Bible Stanza
(from I Corinthians 13)

Though I speak with the most angelic voice
heard in human hearts….

Though I resound as a clear bell calling
all readers to ring with praise….

Though I prophesy with power,
decipher mysteries, acquire
insight, and utter wisdom well….

Though I have faith to move
mountains of people with perceptive words
and cast rejection into deep depths of the sea….

Though I write all I have been given
and hand over my body of work
without reimbursement or acknowledgment….

Though I may boast of publication and best-sells….

Without love for God and readers, my work is nothing.

The loving writer-poet must be patient,
kind – not proud.

The loving writer-poet must not insist
“My work, my way!” nor be
manuscripted with resentment,
but rejoice, rejoice in giving voice to truth.

The loving writer-poet bears all
disappointments, believes all
timing comes from God, and has all
hope to end: endure.

The loving writer-poet knows
we know in part, but every part
of every reader needs
The Loving Word of God.

This love story, theme, or purpose
never ends.

poem by Mary Harwell Sayler originally published in Cross & Quill. Used by permission of the author.


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© 2012, Mary Sayler, all rights reserved.

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Learning to Love the Whole Body of Christ

Losing any part of the human body causes pain and the subsequent adjustments needed to compensate. The more body parts lost, the greater t...