Key Bible Verse: He has broken down the wall of hostility that used to separate us (Ephesians 2:14). Bonus Reading: Ephesians 2:14-16

Most Christians have not been taught how to embrace and affirm their cultural heritage. We've been taught that it's unimportant to our faith. This leaves us feeling indifferent about our racial identity at best and embarrassed, guilty, or confused about our particular value as an ethnic person at worst. The end result is that people are unable to participate in reconciliation efforts to heal people and nations, because it is impossible to affirm in others something you can't affirm in yourself. We must reclaim our uniqueness as ethnic people whose identity is firmly rooted in who God says we are.

At the heart of who we are as Christians is a new being, a new creation, produced by the union of God's Spirit with our spirit. This is the basis of our new identity. We get it as a gift. We merely need to choose to see it, to embrace it, to live in the reality of what we already are and have already been given. The words we speak have the power to produce life or death in the lives of one another. It is God's intention that we encourage one another toward becoming a glorious new creation.

—Brenda Salter McNeil & Rick Richardson in The Heart of Racial Justice

My Response: I'll thank the Creator that my "new creation" status in Christ is still tied to His "very good" original creation.

Thought to Apply: Whatever disunites man from God also disunites man from man.—EDMUND BURKE (British political writer & statesman)

Adapted from The Heart of Racial Justice (InterVarsity, 2004) by permission.

Prayer for the Week

Thank you, Lord, for creating my good and beautiful ethnic ancestors and their culture. Help me to embrace my true self in Christ.

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