Questions for conversation:

• In what ways is your immediate neighborhood diverse? 
• What holds together neighbors and community when there are so many differences?

There is a polarity between conserving the heritage and hard work of the past and celebrating the diversity and new opportunities of the present. That leaves the future open to our decision. 

We are the achievement of those who strove and sacrificed to make a better place. What we have become and what we have made of ourselves is largely the culmination of past generations. Their best is our blessing. 

Yet, this inheritance has limitations. Birthed and steeped in a particular heritage and culture, it is easy to assume that it is the best heritage and the only culture worth knowing. And many consider it perfectly fine to remain in that. 

The world today is increasingly connected and interdependent. Communication technology makes it possible to hold meetings with people scattered around the globe. Travel that once took months by horse is now completed in hours by plane. Access to information, once the realm of secluded scholars is at the fingertips of children. And villages of homogenous generations have given way to urbans of immigrants, transplants and expats. 

Sunday school Jesus has lulled us into thinking God is all about comfort and warmth. For those courageous enough to face the world, we see God bringing about ways that move us from places of comfort, that drive us beyond preferred familiarity, that insist on changes to make things right. God is bringing us to face the marvelous diversity of God’s creation. Racial difference is God’s gift. Cultural variety is God’s delight. Ideas and viewpoints and opinions at variance are parts of God’s creation exceeding our imagination. The struggles we have with difference is entirely human-caused. 

I can only express the wonder of God’s diverse world with the singing of Louis Armstrong,  written by George David Weiss and Robert Thiele:

I see trees so green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

I see skies so blue and clouds so white.
The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.

The colors of the rainbow so pretty in the sky
Are also on the faces of people going by.
I see friends shaking hands saying how do you do.
They're really saying I love you.

I hear babies crying, I watch them grow.
They'll learn much more than I'll ever know.
And I think to myself what a wonderful world.
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world
Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world.

Questions for conversation:

• In what ways is your immediate neighborhood diverse? 
• What holds together neighbors and community when there are so many differences?

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