By This...

"Did you see that?" a friend of mine asked as we walked through the mall.

Considering how non-observant I was that year, especially when I was with a group of my friends, I figured I had missed something pretty strange happening. "No. What?"

"Those people we just passed. They were staring at us." Okay, apparently it was once again my group of friends that was out-of-the-ordinary. Except, for once, we were acting fairly normal. No one was hula-hooping in the middle of the store. (Granted, there were no hula hoops nearby.) No one was turkey calling or making a llama face. No one was attacking each other over cookies. We were just walking and talking, killing time until movie night at my place.

"It's not normal to see a group like us," my friend remarked.

That's when I figured it out. There were five of us. Three girls, two guys - fairly normal for a college town. Three of us were white; one was black; one was Chinese. As soon as my friend pointed it out, I knew what she meant. But I never would have noticed it.

These people were my family. In fact, my "family" that year was probably the most diverse group of friends I had ever been a part of. People from Indonesia, Latin America, Japan, China, all over the U.S., and more. It was normal to me. I talked to people from different races and cultures on a daily basis.

But I learned something about the body of Christ that day - something I had known but never really understood the way I do now.

Jesus told His disciples, "By this, everyone will know you are My disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:35). He told this to a group of people that included a former tax collector (considered a traitor by Jews because they worked for the Romans) and a Zealot (someone who would stop at nothing to see Rome's rule in Israel overthrown). It was a group of men who had to clearly see the work of God to believe that Gentiles could accept Jesus as Lord.

As the years went on, a common belief in Jesus was able to unite Jew, Greek and Roman. It was able to unite fishermen, doctors, tentmakers, farmers. It was able to unite men and women, slave and master, ruler and subject, rich and poor. They were able to lead people to Christ because they were able to see past their differences and be brothers and sisters to each other.

The same is true today. The body of Christ transcends cultures. It transcends race, age, status, wealth, and power. It transcends political viewpoints. It transcends national origins. It makes a family.

People will notice. They notice unity in a world divided about every possible opinion. They notice friendship between races when people are being killed because of the color of their skin. They notice when a Democrat and Republican can have a civil conversation instead of blaming each other for the country's problems. They notice when we love one another.

And eventually, they'll have to ask. They'll have to know and understand the difference -- Jesus.

"There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." - Galatians 3:28