by Rev Douglas Brauner

God’s mercy unities us in community.

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on the SoundCloud link.

“All of you together are Christ’s body, and each of you is a part of it.” 
1 Corinthians 12:27 New Living Translation

My fellow Praying With The Eyes blogger, Payton DeVencenty, and I are participating in a thirty day art challenge on Instagram. Payton has gathered people who he personally knows and others he’s come to appreciate through their work on Instagram and invited us to participate in this challenge.

This challenge is difficult for me even though we’ve just started.

Each of the participants submitted five ideas from which Payton chose to fill out the thirty days. Childhood, texture, geometry, and hidden are four of the thirty subjects. It wasn’t hard submitting five ideas but it’s been difficult translating those ideas into art — or what hopefully passes as art.

One of these daily challenges is community.

A community founded in grace has many colors.

I was messing around with my camera and took this picture of one of our closets. I hadn’t planned on this picture speaking to the idea of community, but when I uploaded it to my computer and looked over the list of concepts, this picture stood out.

There is unity in this picture. Stating the obvious, this is a picture of clothing. On one level, there is only one subject. It’s not a picture with many different subjects, just clothing.

There is diversity in this picture. Speaking out of the other side of my mouth, there are many different subjects in this picture. Not all the clothing looks the same, nor do they have the same purpose. Some of the clothes are better worn in the summer and others in the fall.

We are unified in the blood of Christ — unified in forgiveness. Paul reminds us in Romans 3, “For there is no distinction: for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:22b-24 English Standard Version) However, though we are unified we are also gifted for diversity so that we might more effectively share this gift of forgiveness and life with others. Though we’re equally redeemed, we wear our faith differently.

We are a community of grace.

BTW: Here is a link to the artwork of this thirty day challenge. #sonderviewmag

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado