I love my church because of the diversity of people who attend

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. Romans 3:23-4

When our children were little my wife and I were debating about attending a church closer to our home. We attended some and while the services were good with solid teaching from the pulpit we felt something missing. That missing ingredient was the diversity of skin colors and backgrounds of the church we were currently attending.  You see, at the church, we continue to attend we have a multiple of different races and ethnic backgrounds that we didn't see at the churches we visited. It felt like we were associating with people much like we were which was referred to as 'white ' or caucasian. 

 In the real world of work, we were around different ethnicities.  Our interest in different cultures may also have to do with my wife's teaching in Haiti, a country where the 'white' person is the minority. 

Over the years as I listened to the stories of people of other ethnicities I hear and see similarities with us.  They have the same desires and the same goals to raise their families, help their kids in college, and get them the best medical care money can buy.  

I also know from their stories that they travel the same road when the unfortunate thing such as the loss of a child occurs.  After the sermon message at our Church, I shared with our Pastor about  a friend from Liberia who asked me "how can I get American's to understand that not everyone wants to leave their homeland, but have no choice when civil war  and trauma occurs in their homeland."    I said to our Pastor, "if only we can look past their skin color and their accents and truly listen to their stories just maybe we can find ways to be their friend. 

 I started thinking that when we all get to heaven we will find people of all ethnicities breaking bread together with our Lord Jesus.  Heaven will not be about segregation such as keeping other ethnicities apart from each other.  There will be no black part of heaven, nor a white part of heaven nor a Hispanic part of heaven for that matter.  When we get to heaven we will experience a multitude of ethnicities that are united for the purpose of praising our Lord Jesus, our Savior who died for all us so that we will experience eternal life.

To make a long story short, isn't it time to practice getting to know our ethnic neighbors while we are still on planet earth?