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Key Bible Verses: "If I could speak in any language … but didn't love others … I would be of no value whatsoever" (1 Corinthians 13:1, 3). Bonus Reading: 1 Corinthians 13:1-3

Reconciliation isn't a truce. The white majority can "give ground" but be full of resentment and guilt. Millions of minority people can be "better off" but remain bitter and unforgiving.

Reconciliation is an embrace. Without it, a church can't break the entrenched cycle of ungrace among the races. It can't cure descendents of hard-core racists of residual cancers of shame and superiority, nor empty the descendants of slaves of poisonous reservoirs of dislike and disdain for former oppressors. Only those transformed by God's unfair, insane love—who then give it undeserved as willing victims back to each other—can break the cycle.

So how do we Christians act like a loving family? We must admit that a separation exists, that our ethnic relationships are uneasy and that this misrepresents what God intends for us. Then we must submit to our Creator, ask for help, and recognize that apart from Him we can't be healed. And we must submit to one another by embracing across ethnic barriers and starting to address the hurts and gaps between us. Finally, to achieve deep, lasting reconciliation, we must commit to a lifestyle of loving our racially different neighbors as ourselves.

—Chris Rice in Prism

My Response: Where do I fall along the admit-submit-commit continuum?

Thought to Apply: Racial reconciliation is one of the best roads to humility that we can take because of the opportunity to die to self.—GLEN KEHREIN (reconciliation advocate)

Adapted from Prism (7-8/01) 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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