healing His body

Today in A Year with the Church Fathers, St Augustine talks to us about unity in the body of Christ. We talked about this a few days ago, but it's an important subject. How can we work to heal these wounds in His body, the separation of Christians into groups that disagree with each other and even attack one another on occasion?

Here is a website that presents the Catholic perspective on unity. There are some practical things we can do on that website to bring healing to the body of Christ.

But what else can we do? I mentioned praying for unity in the last blog, and being patient and loving toward those in other traditions. But we can also WORK for unity. We can have dialogues with Christians from other churches than our own, and focus on what we have in common rather than what divides us. Find common ground. Learn to see each other as PEOPLE who are following Jesus, rather than lumping each other into our preconceived notions of errors in theology.

Once we find that common ground, we can build on it. We can learn to see that maybe God is working in their lives, too. That Jesus isn't restricted to an accurate theological system, but works in the hearts of everyone who chooses to follow Him.

God, please lead us as we work toward the unity You prayed for.