The JOY of Unity

          Have you had your JOY JUICE today?  Share some with your family, your co-workers, and your church members! It’s sure to bring a spirit of “unity”!

            "While humility is the attitude of love, UNITY is the atmosphere in which love thrives." (David Jeremiah in Turning Toward Joy)   If you belong to a family where everyone gets along and there are no disagreements, then consider yourself extremely blessed.  The same goes for working colleagues and church members.  The sad fact is….where two or more gathered….many times they disagree!  But that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.  If you love each other and deal with others IN LOVE, then you can agree to disagree.  But if we let those disagreements drive a wedge and the love turns into bitterness and resentment, then “unity” is out the window.

             Amy Carmichael wrote to her church family years ago: “Unlove is deadly. It may kill slowly, but it always kills in the end.  Let us fear it, fear to give room to it as we should fear to nurse a cobra.  It is deadlier than any cobra…One drop of the gall of unlove in my heart or yours, however unseen, has a terrible power of spreading all through our Family, for we are parts of one another!”

             How true! AND where there is not love, there is not JOY.  Humility is the attitude of love, but unity is the atmosphere that must be present in order for love and joy to thrive.

            Are you willing to humble yourself and get rid of the “unlove” in your heart?  Only then can we experience the JOY of unity with our fellow brothers and sisters.