Shine Like Stars: Devotions From Time of GraceSampel

An Attitude That Shines: God's stars appreciate diversity

The same Lord who made every snowflake in a blizzard different clearly enjoys that same diversity among the people he created. And yet the evil one has great success in using our human differences as wedges to drive us apart. Men and women clash; rich and poor fear and resent each other's behaviors; people who can't speak one another's languages can't understand and so don't listen; race and class provide endless opportunities for judgmental bigotry.

But you can shine like a star. "Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God" (Romans 15:7). If God cared enough to bridge the huge gap between his holiness and our lowliness, surely we can overcome gaps of mere gender, language, skin color, and income.

Christians have much to learn--after all, over the centuries how many thousands of Christians were slaveholders or Nazis? What resentments still lurk in your heart? Perhaps you have room to grow in the grace of acceptance. Shine!