Diversity

So it's been a while since I last wrote (about a month?); between exams, finals and other activities, things have been so busy! Reflecting back on this year, I am struck by the wonderful diversity of people I have met. Where else can you find such an odd combination, a mix of mismatched people but in the church? And whoever would have thought of it but God?
God, the genius that He is, INVENTED diversity. He didn't stop at one species of insect, he created billions. The rainbow isn't only one color; and He didn't conceive just one kind of people, He unleashed that fabulous mosaic known as the human race. Christianity has in its membership billionaires and homeless, teenagers and grandparents; it's congregation spreads across continents and cultures.
When God calls us to battle in the Spirit (Ephesians 6), an army of robots or clones (Star Wars reference) is not what He had in mind. He compares us to a body (an analogy used over 30 times in the New Testament, though the most famous reference is 1 Corinthians 12). When you look at the many types of cells that make up the human body, they are different from one another as anything can be. Apart from the body, what could a white blood cell--this amorphous blob, floating around seemingly oblivious to the activity in the rest of the body--possibly have in common with a sleek muscle cell? What unites them is purpose--everything that they are is for the sake of the body. At the first sign of danger, a white blood cell will sacrifice itself to destroy a toxin that could endanger the whole body; and a muscle cell devotes its entire life to pulling and relaxing, pulling and relaxing in unison with other cells like a team of rowers so that your body can walk, run, jump, and move forward in space, though the cell itself will never see the grander movement it helped create.  
I believe that is a reflection of God Himself. When he calls us to life in Him, He's not calling us to a life that's boring and drab. He offers a life that's an explosion of vibrancy, color and excitement. What else can you expect from the One who conceived the masterpiece of diversity He painted the world with? And it's a life with purpose, the ecstasy of community within a family, a Body, united in our devotion to its purpose. Yes, we could live on our own, with ourselves as our only concern, just as a cell could operate on its own (consider the solitary amoeba, living its life depending on other cells only when it ingests them for food). Becoming part of the community that is the body means sacrificing some degree of independence, but what about the grander purpose, the plan that God may have had in mind when He created the masterpiece of diversity to begin with? I mean, which would you rather be? An amoeba, completely independent, swimming around with only yourself to think about (to whatever degree of thought an amoeba can manage) or one of the many, many fabulously diverse cells that make up you and me, aiding that body to accomplish a purpose bigger than any of us can imagine.


"You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body and knit me together in my mother's womb. Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex! Your workmanship is marvelous--how well I know it. You watched me as I was being formed in utter seclusion, as I was woven together in the dark of the womb. You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in your book. Every moment laid out before a single day had passed. How precious are your thoughts about me, O God. They cannot be numbered! I can't even count them, they outnumber the grains of sand. And when I wake up, you are still with me."
Psalm 139:13-18

"To be a member is to have neither life, being, nor movement, except through the spirit of the body, and for the body."
--Blaise Pascal