Being Centred and United in Spirit

UV 4208/10000 Being Centred and United Finally, all of you be like-minded ( united in spirit), sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted (courteous and compassionate toward each other as members of one household), and humble in spirit; I Peter 3 v 8 Peter in this uni-verse exhorts the early church to always strive with all the means at their disposal spiritual unity. He extols the virtues of mutual empathy, fraternal love, gentleness, kindness and humility. Someone rightly pointed out the other day that we need to pay a price in order to obtain the fruit of the spirit while the gifts of the spirit are given freely. Our egos and selfish nature are the price we need to pay, the sacrifice we need to make on the altar of love of Christ. When we daily place our pride, our egos, our selfish desires on the altar, we become in effect a living sacrifice. Peter goes on to state that we should never return evil for evil or tit for tat as the worldly do. In sharp contrast, we should bless those who have done us a bad turn, hurt us without reason or harmed us. We need to control our tongues or rather, surrender every word that rolls off our tongue to be examined by the Lord before we utter it. We need to keep our tongues totally free from malice, vulgarity, insults, threats, gossip and from deceit. We must be peace makers, peace lovers, actively pursuing peace with all as much as it depends on us. Jesus said, “ Learn from Me as I am humble and gentle”, implying the chief attributes and attitudes a believer ought to practice or inculcate are humility and gentleness. Humility is extolled as a God-like quality, a precondition for honour, riches, success, well being. The Lord blesses the humble but resists the proud. If we consistently focus on the locus or the center of our lives- Jesus, we will be able to emulate these qualities which in turn help to preserve the peace and unity in all our network of relationships. We can also continually seek the help and strength of the Holy Spirit to manifest these fruit in our lives.