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Key Bible Verse: "Your blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation" (Revelation 5:9). Bonus Reading: Revelation 7:9-17

I grew up in a typical Chinese American family. Becoming a baptized church member in ninth grade only seemed to underscore the fundamental values of our culture. Obey your parents. Stay out of trouble. Study hard. Work earnestly, and don't waste money. Grow up to do something your parents can brag about to their friends. Becoming a Christian seemed like merely another clever way for Chinese American parents to reinforce their Confucian-based values in their children.

Oh sure, along the way I was taught that I now belonged to a new diverse family in Christ that superseded my biological one. But in those days the non-Chinese family members might as well have lived on the moon! Everywhere I looked, all I'd see were other Chinese American faces in my new extended Christian family. Though we were all taught that heaven was going to be filled with saints "from every tribe and language and people and nation," apparently few of us believed that our common future should affect or influence the ethnic and cultural ingredients of our Christian communities now. Diversity could wait until heaven.

— Ken Fong in Secure in God's Embrace

My Response: My exposure to ethnic diversity includes …

Adapted from Secure in God's Embrace (InterVarsity, 2003) by permission.

Copyright © 2005 by the author or Christianity Today International/Men of Integrity magazine. Click here for reprint information on Men of Integrity.

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Prayer for the Week

Lord, if I'm part of the problem for unity in Your Church, make me willing to take action to become part of the solution.

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