10.25.23 - Colossians 3:9-11
Love is inclusive, not exclusive. How might your response to others today spark love through inclusion?
Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator. In that renewal there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, enslaved and free, but Christ is all and in all!
It’s so easy to compartmentalize in order to get through the tough stuff.
Humans find comfort in divisions because it is safe. It's easier to identify who's in the in-group and who's in the out-group than it is to look at how our responsibility adds or detracts from the overall well-being of the human family.
This passage contrasts two ways of being in the world - angry, malicious, and greedy with a renewable Love-imprinted character.
This way of being in the world cannot think along dualistic lines or identify with in-groups and out-groups. The life of one following the Christ consciousness is unitive, wholistic, inclusive and undivided.
Examining our biases is not easy or comfortable. Where are you being lazy or unloving in your responses to “the other” right now?
How can you heighten your capacity for the renewable image of love today?
--Libby Tedder Hugus