Getting Comfortable with Being Uncomfortable

BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 12 MAY 2024 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Today, we are wrapping up the second of three series this year on some of our values here at Revolution. Our topic this time out has been Diversity, and the big idea is that diversity is the fruit that grows on the tree of humility. If we look around ourselves and we don’t see that fruit–if we find ourselves surrounded exclusively by people who look like us, speak like us, vote likes us, live like us, believe like us–it’s because we are struggling, on a fundamental level, to recognize that we are part of a story that is bigger than us. You guys have been pretty open to this idea the last few weeks, and I know it’s actually been challenging some of you in exciting ways.

But what we haven’t addressed so far in this series–at least, not in a thorough way–is what diversity does: If we get the humility part right, if we actually find ourselves surrounded by the actual, valuable presence of a full variety of human people, cultures, convictions, and gifts… how does it really help?

It’s an important question, and I want you to know that, this past week, our Discipleship Lay Leader Dante Griffin and I actually went searching for some answers. On Monday morning, we flew out to Austin, Texas to join our very own Andy Hanauer at a summit his organization, the One America Movement, puts on each year. One America is a non-profit whose mission statement is, unbelievably, “to build a united American society.” So, pray for Andy! The way this summit works is that One America gathers faith leaders from different religions from across the country together in one place and challenges them to sit together, listen to each other, and talk. The goal (quite explicitly) isn’t conversion: the goal is to model humility towards each other in a way that can bear witness to real and mutual love.

One of my favorite things about the conference was that it wasn’t a blended-faith event. We weren’t there to mute or restrain our separate convictions about God, about sin, about hope. When the speakers prayed before each meal, they did it in the ways that are true for them. No one “watered things down” so others might be comfortable. Instead, they explained why they do things the way they do them, and invited us to listen. 

And here’s what I think that kind of work can do: it doesn’t make a “melting pot,” it makes us productively uncomfortable. When I hear a rabbi talk about God, it exposes me to new data that can both stretch and clarify the edges of what I think. When I listen to an imam read scripture, I can ask, “what is the beating heart of what he believes?”… and then that question can make its way into me, too: “what is the beating heart of what I believe?” It’s a healthy place to be, but here’s the thing: it’s also not one I ever tend to create for myself. 

My favorite workshop at the conference was about AI Disinformation and Politics. I say “favorite,” but that’s not quite true–it drove me crazy. Here’s why: the speakers wanted to coach us on how we, as pastors, can help you, as congregants, stop sharing nonsense on Facebook. In many ways, I’m on board with this, so let’s try it…

KNOCK IT OFF!

… did that work? Okay, they actually had better ideas than that. But what bothered me more than the hard work we need to do to interrupt the speed with which you share disinformation is my curiosity about why the algorithms sent that disinformation to you in the first place. What have you already communicated about your beliefs that makes Facebook think you will like this meme, or this insult? Because here’s the thing about falling down rabbit holes on the Internet: nobody falls down a hole because they’re wandering around, exploring new things, getting tempted by some forbidden fruit. You fall down a hole because you love where you’re standing so much you start digging. The internet isn’t “leading” you, it’s “limiting” you. 

Do any of you use Spotify? If you do, you have experienced exactly what I’m talking about: I listened to some sad songs one day when I was feeling gloomy, and now “Kenny’s Monday Mopey Mix” is constantly at the top of my feed. Spotify seems like it’s giving me more, but it’s actually giving me more examples of less: I’m hearing less new music, less new genres, less… everything!… because what it wants to do is zero in on me. 

My hypothesis is this: if we don’t resist it, the world is all too happy to make sure we never run into something we don’t already like or agree with ever again… with the exception of when it occasionally shows us something so foreign the point is just to make us angry and get us to hole up even more! So, if the problem is a world that reduces the kinds of frictions which can actually clarify and strengthen what we believe… a world that doesn’t want us to encounter diversity… what can we do? 

Our central Biblical text this morning comes from Paul’s letter to the Galatians. In this letter, Paul tells the story of his conversion from a life as a staunch Pharisee to a life as a Christian missionary to the Gentiles. The power of Paul’s story has always been in this radical change: before meeting Jesus, Paul would have been mortified to be in the intimate presence of non-Jews. The Pharisee tradition was Paul’s version of Spotify: it constantly narrowed down his understanding of holiness in a way that made him not only self-righteous, but unnaturally content in that self-righteousness. No friction; just endless reassurances that he was right.

But Jesus turned Paul’s life upside down, and by the time he writes this letter, his entire life is spent with folks he used to believe were unclean. And did this “tone down” Paul’s zeal for holiness? Not in the slightest! What it actually did was clarify for Paul that the holiness of God cleans the hearts of those who are obedient to him, and thus if “cleanliness” is what you long for, you have an infinitely better chance of finding it by listening to God than you do by trying to impress Him. 

In any case, in this story, Paul is serving a Gentile congregation in the city of Antioch, and Jesus’s disciple Peter–who is also a central Christian leader–comes to visit. At first, Paul says that Peter followed his lead and ate his meals with the Gentiles… even though, under Jewish law, this made him ceremonially unclean. But then James and some other leaders from Jerusalem came to visit, and Peter

drew back and kept himself separate [from the gentiles] for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray […] But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to [Peter] before them all, “If you, though a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?” (Galatians 2:12-14)

Paul calls Peter out for seeking old comfort over new challenges, and he ties that behavior to the realities of ministry: “don’t you realize that the gentiles are doing something uncomfortable, too?” Paul goes on to say,

We ourselves are Jews by birth and not gentile sinners, yet we know that a person is justified not by the works of the law but through the faith of Jesus Christ. […] But if I build up again the very things that I once tore down, then I demonstrate that I am a transgressor. For through the law I died to the law, so that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing. (Galatians 2:15, 18-21)

There are two incredibly important things I think we can find here. The first is that we need to “sit down with the gentiles” because it’s only by encountering uncomfortable situations that the things we believe in theory can really get tested. Paul knows that Peter knows they are “justified by faith” and not by works… but he says that if your works don’t reflect your faith, they are empty. Earlier in this chapter, Paul points out that Peter is one of the leaders who had cleared the way for gentiles to be included in the Christian community as equals. But Peter had made that decision from the safe distance of Jerusalem, and in a sense, he was saying, “this is a good thing for Paul to do… but that doesn’t mean we all have to.” When he first got to Antioch, he gave it a try! But when the others arrived, he stepped back from the challenge. 

In our own lives, we need to choose diversity, even when it becomes uncomfortable, precisely because it has become uncomfortable. That discomfort is hard, but without it, what is a good idea “in theory” remains only that. When Paul says he has been “crucified with Christ,” he means that he has resolved to subject what he believes about God to the utmost hardship and difficulty because if the hard path isn’t necessary, Jesus wouldn’t have needed to walk it first. 

So, what does diversity “do” for us? It enables us to actually test what we believe! Is love, is grace, is compassion how our beliefs about God will flourish? Or is it just stuff somebody else can do if they want to… but it’s also okay for us to hang back and just believe the right things in our heads? If you don’t “sit down with the gentiles,” the truth is that you won’t actually know.

The second thing we see here is how important it is, how essential it is, to know a Paul. Peter’s challenge was putting his beliefs about inclusion to the actual test of sharing a meal with people he thought were unclean. But Paul’s challenge was to rebuke not just anyone, but freaking PETER! So, why does he do it? I think it’s because, most of all, he loves him. There’s an old saying I like: “the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.” It would have been incredibly easy for Paul to just let this slide… or, even worse, to wait until Peter left and then criticize him to the gentiles! But the power of diversity–of beliefs, of convictions–is in its ability to clarify and deepen our understanding. If Paul really loves Peter, challenging him is part of that love. And if Peter really trusts Paul’s love for him, receiving that challenge is an extension of his own commitment to listening, and to growth. We need “Pauls” to push on us! But that push doesn’t work if we don’t have a relationship in place we trust will endure.

Getting our posture right–cultivating humility in our hearts–will get us in a room with people who are different. This is counter-cultural, especially in this moment of polarization and flag-planting. But once we are in that room, there is work to do! We still have to be willing to be challenged and refined there. We can put our beliefs into action… and we can listen when we come up short. We can “sit with the gentiles”… and we can “receive rebuke from the Pauls.” None of this is comfortable… but it is healthy. Both the “gentiles” and the “Pauls” in this story are folks we won’t naturally pursue on our own! But both are necessary in our circles if we hope to grow.

This year, our theme is Together on Purpose. We haven’t addressed that much in this series, but I want to rectify that today before we close. Do you want to know why I think God insists on the local church as a “good idea” for building His Kingdom? Because it’s a really wild plan, if you think about it: somehow, a million little Christian communities is going to be feel more unified than a single, big one? Somehow, grouping us together by geography is going to lead to more mutual love than letting us group up by age, by life stage, by hobbies, by politics? It’s a weird system! But my suspicion is that God chooses it because it makes darn well sure that no one can faithfully pursue him without running into discomfort. If you spend a lifetime in the church, you’re going to fight with someone eventually. You’re going to end up somewhere where you’re the only young person in the room… or the only old person in the room. Where you hate the songs on Sundays or love the songs on Sundays. Where you like the sermons or don’t like the sermons. And, on an essential level, if you really want to be faithful to the Savior who has seen to your adoption among his people, you’re going to realize you’re stuck with someone you don’t like. 

At least in this culture, this might be one of the most radical things about real Christian faith: it challenges you to be comfortable with discomfort. Jesus certainly was! And when we lean in to that discomfort, when we even start to value it, we begin looking a bit more like him. The point for you, just like the point for Jesus!, isn’t to be a reed constantly blowing in the wind. You don’t have to give up what you believe every time you talk to someone new, just like Jesus never ultimately abandoned his faith. But leaning into discomfort develops what you believe, refines what you believe, sands off the parts that aren’t wholly in line with God’s heart, and fills in the gaps our own pride or fear create. You don’t get those nudges, those challenges, if you don’t make a point of being in hard spaces and relationships. Ask anyone who has been intimate and close to another person for a minimum of 10 years: has your friend, partner, or spouse “worn” on you?? And are you better for it? 

We are together, on purpose: if you look around your life and you don’t see diversity, you don’t have to feel guilty, you can get excited! Maybe the algorithms have their hold on you right now, but you can break free of them–you can delete your apps, talk to a new coworker, chat with someone out on their porch–and look what’s waiting for you when you do! Listening to someone who disagrees with your politics, your parenting, your faith isn’t a threat, it’s a chance to develop and mature your thinking. Maybe some things you believe will change down the line, but that’s not a loss for you, it’s a gain! So, seek diversity because it’s how we grow… and in a moment where growth is resisted so ferociously in our culture… diversity is also how we witness to the beauty, and the difference, of God’s Kingdom.

This church needs folks from across the political spectrum in it: we won’t grow without challenge. It needs folks who pray differently, worship differently, have different understandings of what the Bible is and how it works: the point isn’t that every person’s view is already “correct,” it’s that listening to other views can help all of us have increasingly better ones. If you’re perfectly comfortable here, your faith will die here; that’s just the truth. But there is a difference between feeling uncomfortable and feeling unsafe. The world right now doesn’t believe this–safety and comfort are increasingly treated like synonyms–but we are called to believe it. The people in this room have been drawn here by the God of the Universe to help each other. We’re not a melting pot. We’re not a monoculture. We are lovingly diverse, and we can long to be increasingly diverse, because that diversity changes us.

The key difference between God’s Kingdom and the American Kingdom right now is that whereas America wants to convince you that the only way to happiness is to seek yourself endlessly–in apps, in products, in politics, in culture–we have been invited to believe that the actual way to happiness is to seek Jesus first. This is “ground zero” for diversity: we believe someone else knows more about us, more about what we need, than we do! And where does Jesus lead us? Not into self-righteousness, not into isolation, or “down a rabbit hole” of narrow and judgmental faith… but into sincere, love-filled, and challenging relationships. Diversity refines and matures us. 

So, sit with Gentiles. In the right season, be a Paul. And in every other season, listen to the Pauls who challenge you. The best version of our community will be one where love triumphs over differences, not by reducing them or ignoring them, but by including them under one banner where growth isn’t something we sit back and hope for, it’s something we work for. 

I’m so grateful we’re not all the same. May our differences help and not hinder us in the season ahead.

Cultivating Curiosity, Acting Intentionally, and Seeking Diversity

BY DR. KENNY CAMACHO / SERMON DELIVERED 5 MAY 2024 FOR REVOLUTION CHURCH

Today, we are continuing in our new series Diversity/Humility. Last Sunday, the big idea was that becoming a genuinely diverse community–which we defined as the actual, valuable presence of a full variety of human people, cultures, convictions, and gifts–depends on resisting the typically-American desire to be a “melting pot” where individual differences get “cooked off” and a monoculture emerges. The key to resisting this, we learned, is pursuing humility as a church family: we have to remember that we are all works in progress, we are all still being challenged and transformed by the Holy Spirit of God, and this will enable us to not only have patience with others, but to open ourselves up to learning, too. 

This week, we want to shift our focus from what happens at the church level to what happens on the personal level. Are our own lives and relationships adequate reflections of God’s diverse Kingdom? Do we really want or expect them to be? And, if not, how can we do a better job of pursuing change? 

We can begin with the same “heart check” for our lives that we arrived at last week for our church: if we look around ourselves–at our friendships, at our workplaces, at our neighborhoods–do we see real diversity? Just like last week, I want to clarify that “diversity” means more than people who speak a different language or identify with a different ethnicity; it also means people whose lifestyles are different, whose politics are different, and whose convictions are different. Are we actually encountering folks who aren’t like us on a daily basis? And if not, why not? 

I’ll cut to the chase today: if we want to pursue diversity, we need to be intentional, curious, and humble… and each of these convictions relies on the one beneath it. Our operational metaphor will be nesting dolls: do you remember these? We’re going to proceed this morning by looking at the biggest one first, and then we’ll see what’s inside.

The “outer doll” is diversity. This is our goal. We ought to be people who are in real relationships with all sorts of people, and we know this is true because, as we talked about last Sunday, God’s Kingdom will be clearly and plainly diverse. Folks who think differently, worship differently, and live differently will be part of a chorus in heaven singing praises to God in every language. So, if that’s where we’re all headed, it stands to reason we should start listening to each other now! Diversity serves everyone and brings us closer to what is intended for us; that’s the “outer doll”–that’s what we want to be in the world. 

But what does it take to get there? The doll “nesting” inside of diversity is intentionality. You’re never going to value the actual presence of a full variety of human people, cultures, convictions, and gifts if you don’t go where people are. We already know this about our own lives, and we see it everywhere in Scripture, too: Abraham would never have left Ur if God hadn’t told him to. Joseph would never have saved the Egyptians from famine if his brothers hadn’t sold him into slavery. The people of Nineveh would never have repented if God hadn’t made a fish spit Jonah out on their shores. Ruth wouldn’t have become King David’s grandmother if she hadn’t loved her mother-in-law so much she chose to be a stranger among her people. Jesus wouldn’t have met half his disciples if he hadn’t left a life of carpentry to live with fishermen… and we wouldn’t have met Jesus if he had chosen the comfort of heaven over us! A diverse community always requires the intentional decision to go where other people are. 

But as much as we see that truth exemplified in Scripture, we also see that this decision typically takes a bit of nudging from God, too. Consider Acts 8. The first Christian community is thriving in Jerusalem, and once again, this frightens the authorities in the Temple. So, a crackdown on the church begins, and ultimately, the apostle Stephen is stoned to death. The community is scattered, and the Bible says the other apostles ended up all over Judea and Samaria. But, in verse 4, the author writes that

Those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went. (Acts 8:4)

Suddenly, churches start popping everywhere, filled with new people from different backgrounds… including Samaritans (who the Jews in Jerusalem hated) and even Gentiles (who they hated more!). Had the apostles never been persecuted, the community would not have diversified. But once they got that nudge, they trusted it for what it was.

Later in the chapter, a man named Philip is walking on the road to Gaza, when he sees an Ethiopian eunuch riding towards Jerusalem in a chariot reading the Book of Isaiah. The author of Acts writes that

The Spirit told Philip, “Go to that chariot and stay near it.” Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet. “Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. (Acts 8:29-31)

Talk about being intentional: the resulting conversation led to the introduction of the Gospel to the entire continent of Africa!

Now, in our own lives, we are unlikely to ever encounter quite that kind of an opportunity. But Philip didn’t start a conversation because he knew this Ethiopian man was important, or even because he intended to become a great missionary. He started it because the Spirit showed him someone else, and he asked them a question. God did the nudging… and Philip was intentional about listening. 

Initially, I thought the best place to take this story would be instructional for us: who is God trying to get you to see? What is the courageous question you can ask them? Those are still good challenges! But after a bit of reflection, I got hung up on these “God nudges”: as much as we might admire the handful of Philips of the Bible, who are alert and brave, God’s story also depends on more than a few Jonahs, who God has to drag out of their comfort zone kicking and screaming. What can we learn from them?

Here’s the thing: the hardest part of embracing diversity in our lives is taking the big action step of intentionally surrounding ourselves with others. If everybody in your neighborhood looks and thinks just like you, it might be time to move. If everybody in your workplace has the same politics, it might not be a healthy job. If all of your friends share all of your beliefs, you might need to be intentional about making some new ones. But my hunch is that, when I say that, a lot of you are thinking… but I don’t want to! And “bingo”: me neither! So what is underneath this need to be intentional? What motivates it… and if we are struggling to feel motivated, what is going wrong? We need to find the third doll!

Here it is: we won’t be intentional about diversity if we’re not curious about other people. Curiosity is what separates the Philips in the Bible from the Jonahs. Let me tell you something about my own story that might be insightful here. When I moved to Maryland, one of the biggest culture shocks for me was that, although Maryland is hypothetically a more racially integrated and sensitive place than South Carolina, it certainly didn’t feel that way to me… and it didn’t feel that way because, although the white people I met seemed to hold less prejudicial views of people of color than I was used to, they also didn’t seem to really know any. The thing about the South is that it is actually extremely racially diverse: my high school was probably 35 or 40 percent African American, which is much higher than the national average. The rural area I lived in wasn’t suburban, so there weren’t really “neighborhoods” and “communities” like there are here… folks just lived around each other. My street was predominantly white, but the street behind mine wasn’t, and both white and black people got gas at the same gas stations, shopped for groceries at the same grocery stores, and ate at the same restaurants. But although I was around people of color all the time, as a white person, I wasn’t curious about them. That’s where the prejudice really existed: it was an intentional disinterest in other people, rooted in a belief that I already knew everything I needed to know about them. The ugliness of things lived in exactly that spot: I didn’t think I needed to know.

When I moved here, I didn’t sense that same ugliness, those same racist assumptions, around me… but I also taught at a school that was probably 90% white, lived in a community that was 90% white, and didn’t really run into anyone who didn’t look like me anywhere I went. Consider Annapolis, as a whole: the public schools in this city reveal that we are extremely racially diverse here… but our neighborhoods are organized so that we wouldn’t really know it. 

My point is that things might not seem as ugly here as they did where I grew up–or as overtly prejudiced–but they reflect the same startling lack of curiosity. And, unlike where I grew up, that lack of curiosity feels institutionalized in this community… as if we’ve been organized around the saying, “out of sight, out of mind.” 

So long as our curiosity is stunted–by either apathy or acquiescence–we won’t be intentional. So, if diversity depends on intentionality, and intentionality depends on curiosity, how can we cultivate that?

The good news is that our faith is trying to train our curiosity. In 2021, the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity wrote an article exploring the curiosity of Christ. They found that the Gospels record 307 questions asked by Jesus; that Jesus himself is asked 183 questions in those texts; and that Jesus directly answers just 3. What do we make of such an inquisitive Savior? After all, Jesus is God… doesn’t he already know the answers? And if Jesus knows so many answers, why does he share so few? My hunch is that it’s because he’s a good teacher… and good teachers know that the answers that stick are the answers students are led to discover for themselves. 

Let’s look at Jesus’s encounter with a Pharisee named Nicodemus. The Bible says Nicodemus

came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 

Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 

“How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 

Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit.  You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 

“How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 

“You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?” (John 3:2-14)

Nicodemus is prompted to talk to Jesus because he’s curious about the miracles: he wants to know what Jesus is up to. But Jesus doesn’t talk to him about healing people or multiplying food… he talks about the Kingdom of God. This Kingdom, Jesus says, will require that Nicodemus become a new kind of child. Why is this?

I think it’s because children know they don’t know. It’s important to remember who Nicodemus is: he’s a Pharisee, a scholar of the Temple. Jesus teases him about this later: “You’re the teacher… and you don’t know?” But it’s a gentle teasing, because I think he’s hoping he has nudged Nicodemus into exactly the right spot: “No, I don’t know this… is there more I don’t know?” 

Nicodemus thinks he’s there because he was curious, and that curiosity led him to be intentional in seeking out Jesus, and that intentionality will make him more well-rounded, more “diverse” in his life. “Hey, look at me! I actually talked to the guy!”

But I think Jesus’s approach here reveals that real curiosity depends on personal humility. It’s not only Nicodemus who must “be born again when they are old”… we all do. If you try to ask questions without really being open to the answers, your curiosity is performative, and worse: it’s arrogant. Maybe that’s where Nicodemus was starting from; maybe it’s not. But Jesus digs right down to the root, doesn’t he? 

“you people do not accept our testimony. I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things?”

If your curiosity is only “earth deep”–if you just want to know how Jesus performed what seemed like miracles so you can check that box for yourself, or for your friends back at the Temple–you’re going to miss out on things that are so much bigger and better. Jesus’s life stimulated curiosity… but the reason was so the mystery he participated in might nudge people out of their certainty, out of their arrogance, and remind them that healthy curiosity has one final nesting doll inside it: and that (often baby-shaped!) doll is real humility. There is more than what you know.

If we want diversity in our lives, we have to be intentional about seeking it out: talking to strangers, spending time in different communities, reading and listening to writers who make us uncomfortable. And if we want to be motivated to be intentional, we have to be curious: what exists outside my bubble? What do other people believe that my social media algorithms, my preferred news outlets, my coworkers don’t? And if we want to stay curious, we have to stay humble. Intentionality without curiosity is virtue-signaling and empty. Curiosity without humility feeds pride and arrogance. The root of what we long for, the anchor of the value we say we want to display as Christians, is the genuine belief that we aren’t the main characters of the story. We need help! When we center ourselves here–on a humble recognition that we should be amazed to be where we are, to be loved the way we are loved, and included in the ways we are included–the motivation to expand our neighborhoods, expand our jobs, expand our friendships stops being about just trying to “do the right thing” and becomes urgent and essential in our hearts. I have to remember that God wants to teach me new things. I’m not finished… and God has sent me to a place already where there are more people, more passions, more convictions, more gifts, more struggles to understand, more needs to try and meet, more lives to bless and be blessed by than I will ever have time to know! 

The world is meant to be overwhelming, as God is overwhelming. What we can hope for is to be delighted by it all instead of feeling afraid of it. If I see myself rightly, curiosity becomes a natural reaction to the world. If I see that curiosity rightly, intentionality in my relationships and circles becomes a natural reaction to the hunger God has nurtured in me. We won’t become a genuinely diverse community by just trying harder. We will get there when our hearts feel the world God has created rightly. 

So, what can we do? Be the tiniest nesting doll: BE THE BABY! Remember that you’re growing, and that growth happens when we experience the world, God, and others with an open heart. That open-heartedness makes us curious, curiosity makes us intentional, and living intentionally leads us to diversity. 

This week, pray first for humility in your heart: make that your Sunday afternoon goal! And then, on Monday, start asking questions. Ask God in prayer; turn the radio off and ask the world by paying attention on your drive to work; ask a coworker once you get there. Be curious! And as that curiosity reveals new discoveries–of beauty, and even of hardship or suffering–keep praying about ways you can act intentionally for your own benefit, as well as the benefit of others. 

Every other force in your life–economic forces, social forces, cultural forces, political forces–wants you to stay right where you are. When you’re safely in a bubble, you are predictable, you are controllable, and you are purchasable… and reassuring you that you’ve got it all figured out, all your opinions are right, and you can do everything on your own is exactly how those forces trick you into feeling comfortable there. But being stagnant shouldn’t be comfortable! The Kingdom of God is not the same as the kingdom of this world, and when we allow God to humble us, when we remember there is more than we know, the wheels are set in motion which can not only lead us to flourishing and wonder in our own lives, but also to radical empathy, kindness, and freedom in our community. The end result of this sort of transformation is the prosperity of the wild diversity of God’s Creation, and that is something I long to see. 

Do I long for it enough to risk letting my certainties go? I hope I do! 

Do you? I’ll pray for us.