United or Divided? Your Call

Math was never one of my favorite subjects during my school days. I acknowledge what an essential life tool it is, but that didn’t make learning it any more fun. I can’t help thinking back on how it taught a simple lesson that I can’t admit grasping as a child. When I multiply what I have, I get an increase. When it’s divided, it’s less. It’s very basic and life illustrates for us how profound that can be.

One of the early commands given to man and to the earth in the beginning of the bible was to be fruitful and to multiply. So we see this charge to increase. Afterall, for folks that are toiling in the dirt with their gardens, they are hopefully looking for a return on the investment of their labor. That’s more fruit during harvest season or whatever the case may be. The goal is an increase. Those little seeds will be multiplied. I don’t know many people that plant seeds in the ground and are looking for less than what they started out with.

Math was never one of my favorite subjects...

Division takes us in a different direction. Now, we’re looking at a decrease in something. To narrow it down to mathematics, we know that 5x2=10. That’s more than I started with. If I take that 10 and divide it into 5, then I’m left with 2. Significantly less than what I started out with. In terms of money, we always want more, not less. So it’s easy to think of numbers in those terms. But what about other areas of our lives where we feel the impact of division. 

In our society, we may hear about the haves and the have nots. That’s a glaring division that may be very visible to us every day. It’s hard to ignore the people around that are struggling to provide a simple meal for their families versus the ones who have so much they end up wasting even more. We feel division on a deeper level as way. It’s safe to say that the very same society I mentioned suffer from a battle of morals. Right vs wrong. Wrong vs right. That same battle of wills trickles down even more to our faith and beliefs.

Sometimes, we spend so much time pointing our finger at the enemy, that we may neglect to recognize when we are the ones he is using to tear us down. It’s such a tragedy when this happens within our families or even within our churches. Something that stands out to me when thinking about division is that not only is it a decrease from what we started out with, but it can also be viewed as weaker from this perspective.

The issue that the Egyptian pharaohs had with the children of Israel during the early bible days was their rapid multiplication. After King Solomon’s death, the kingdom split into two and were never quite as strong as when they were united. That lesson in history isn’t easily forgotten because we can still see it take place today. It should serve as a reminder for us that united we stand and divided we fall.

Let’s not allow divisions within the body of Christ. Afterall, we are one body with many members. Our callings and our ministries may differ from one another and that is okay. My ears do not serve the same purpose as my feet, yet they are all apart of my body and each have their purpose. Likewise are we in Christ. It’s more important than ever to be united in Him or we risk falling without Him.

Stay Sunny!

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