Division has become a way of life. Nearly every time you turn on the news, someone has stepped forward to draw a line separating the holy from the unholy, those who possess the truth from those who are misguided or worse, evil. Speaking about our current political climate on Larry King Live, President Jimmy Carter stated the he believed that our country is more divided today than it was during the time of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.
Line-drawing and boundary-marking seems to become the religious and political pursuit of the day, but it is not new. The Pharisees asked the disciples, "Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and 'sinners'?" Those who asked the question had already answered it for themselves. Jesus was hanging out with wrong crowd, those who were outside the Kingdom of God. The question had clearly defined boundaries that indicated who was in and who was outside of the Kingdom of God.
Here, at Storrs Community Church, we place an emphasis not on who is in or who is outside the Kingdom of God, but rather which direction you facing. At any given point each of us is moving either toward or away from God.
A visitor to the Australian Outback was intrigued by the seemingly endless miles of farming country with no sign of any fences. Finally he asked a local rancher, “How do you keep track of all your cattle?” The rancher replied, "Oh, that's not a problem. Out here we dig wells instead of building fences. There is no need to fence the cattle in when they are highly motivated to stay within range of water, their most important source of life.”
Rather than building and guarding the boundary markers, our call is to dig wells by living the reconciliation that Christ has secured for us so deeply that those who are thirsty will be drawn to him.