Hold Us Together
One of my favorite parts of scripture in the Bible is in Colossians 1. Starting in verse 15, Paul talks about how Jesus is the Son of the invisible God, the head of the church, the firstborn over all creation. Not only is He the beginning and the end, but He holds everything together.
He is before all things, and in him, all things hold together.
Colossians 1:17
Naturally, when I first heard the song “Hold Us Together,” which we have sung a few times in recent weeks, I immediately thought of the words in Colossians and fell in love with the message in the song.
There are really two ways God holds us together. First, He literally holds us and our individual bodies together. The process that each and every one of us went through to be living, breathing humans is extraordinary. The exact timing of how we were shaped in the womb, from when our hearts first begin to flutter to the moment our eyelids are created. The extreme process of development and birth is remarkable. Simply waking up each morning with oxygen filling our lungs to be transported throughout our bodies via arteries and veins to release carbon dioxide through those same lungs later is incredible. How each ventricle, atrium, and valve work within our hearts in a syncopated way to pump just the right amount of blood at just the right amount of pressure without our hearts bursting at the seams and without us having to think about it. I would call it magic, but I know it's just God's perfect design. If you think of what these elaborate machines covered in skin do each and every day to function and survive is a wild thought.
God fearfully and wonderfully made us in His image. The complexity of our bodies glorifies Him with every breath and beat of our hearts regardless of whether or not our minds fully comprehend who He is. We are His workmanship, His masterpiece.
Just as intricately as God formed our bodies, He also made us to be one together. This is the second way God intends for us to hold together. When it comes to your body, you can’t say, “Cells, stop dividing and working together!” and you can’t tell your blood to flow in the opposite direction, but we do have a choice to live in or out of harmony with one another.
Together, we make up one body. 1 Corinthians 12 talks about how there are many parts to the body, but collectively their job is to work together to function properly. No individual part is better than the other. If the whole body was an eye, how would we hear? There is not a part of the body that is dispensable.
If someone came up to you and said you had to lose a body part, but you were the one who had to choose, I believe this would be one of the hardest decisions you ever made. What would you choose? How would you even narrow it down? I, for one, don't want to lose a body part. I love my limbs and organs!
In the same way, we are made to work together in unity and harmony. There is not a single one of us who is less important, regardless of their preferred NFL team or love of bacon. Each of us is valuable, but we have to work together. We have to lay down our pride and realize we are not the most important human being on the planet and not everything we think or believe is popular.
As Aretha says, a little R-E-S-P-E-C-T for one another can go a long way in unifying us. Of course, we are not always going to agree, but we do need to love one another. That love is what holds us together.
And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:14
We are so much better and stronger together than we are apart. God holds us together, but we do have a choice to contribute and be beneficial to the body or not. We have a choice to love, be humble, respect each other, encourage one another, and live in harmony.
How good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity!
Psalm 133:1
Go be a blessing,
April Bergez
Worship Leader