Upon recently visiting New York City, I had the pleasure of
visiting the Times Square Church. This
is a HUGE church down in the heart of Times Square with the most beautiful,
glorious music you’ve ever heard. But it
wasn’t the music that stood out to me.
As in any great church, it was the people.
When I arrived, the sanctuary was already full - and it was ENORMOUS! We were escorted to the “overflow room,”
which was huge as well – about as many seats and people as my graduating high
school class! My friend and I sat down
and the music began – and so did God’s lesson for me.
I looked up at the screen and saw and heard the choir. I have been in choir off and on for as long
as I’ve been able to speak, so I always love to hear the music and even sing
along when it’s appropriate. But this
choir was different than any I had ever been.
It was filled with the faces of the most beautiful multitude of people
I’ve ever seen.
I saw people whose ethnicities represented what felt like
every corner of the world! Sitting side
by side and singing God’s glories were people representing every heritage I had
heard of. The skin tones, eyes, hair
color, genders and ages were the most varying I’ve ever known; it felt like an
ad for Benetton, the clothing line from the 80’s. I felt tears welling up in my eyes at what felt like a true celebration of God all over the world.
I began to look around the annex where I sat. I was greeted by the African American woman
on my left and the women of various different asian ethnicities behind me. The Hispanic
woman on my right smiled at me and nodded.
I noticed the man in front of me had a bible written in what I believe
was Korean. I became overwhelmed by the incredible
reminder that God sees no color. God
sees no race. God sees His children and
He loves each one of us so completely.
Equally.
I watched as the variety of human beings had an equally wide
variety of worship styles – something that I always love and encourage. There were hands in the hair, dancing,
clapping, some singing out loud and others in reverent prayer or sitting
quietly in their seats, all praising the One who created us all. The song “Jesus Loves the Little Children”
came storming into my head, and I’ve never understood the words as clearly as I
grasped that day:
Jesus
loves the little children…All the children of the world,
Red
and yellow, black and white, they are precious in His sight.
Jesus
loves the little children of the world.
This is His world and these are His children. Even
thinking of the concept of each soul in that room being one of God’s precious children
was incredible to me. I know how much I
love my own children – completely, unconditionally and without limits. God loves each one of us – every human being
on this planet – MORE than that!
We are called to
celebrate Him and His creation and that includes each other. We are called to love, not just those with
whom we most closely identify, but EVERYONE.
We may not speak their language or understand their customs, but those
are earthly things that we have created and they don’t separate us in God’s
eyes.
See what kind of love the Father has given to us,
that we should be called children of God; and so we are….1 John 3:1
I’ll close with a picture I have in my head. It’s a picture of a box of sixty-four
crayons. When I was a kid, I was SO
excited to get that box of crayons – with the sharpener! Having such a huge variety of different
colors made the “back to school blues” just a bit better. Now, imagine if that same box had been 64 blue
crayons. I like blue; it’s my favorite
color. But the true beauty, the allure
of the box…. was in the variety...the differences.
Dear Lord, Help us to truly love one another as Your precious children and the beautiful variety that only You could create. Help us to love as Jesus loved - wholly, completely and without conditions. Amen.
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