One body
Day 600, Friday, April 3
1 Corinthians 12:12-31
The unity of the body is one of Paul’s most consistent teachings. All believers have been made into one body through our union with the Spirit. While this may not remove the distinctiveness of each person’s background and history, it renders those distinctions insignificant.
Paul said, “We were all baptized by one Spirit so as to form one body—whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free—and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.”
In verses 15-26 Paul uses his famous illustration of how each part of the body is dependent on the others; none can reject other body parts without harming itself. An eye is not the same as an ear, but they need each other to fully function. “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ.”
In this reading Paul again lists some of the gifts of the Spirit, much the same as the list we read yesterday. We read of apostles, prophets, teachers, miracles, healing, helping, guidance, tongues and interpretation.
Not all share the same gifts, he says. He goes on to advise, “Now eagerly desire the greater gifts.”

-Rev. Mark Fleming

Friday meditation

Psalms 105:16-25
He called down famine on the land and destroyed all their supplies of food; and he sent a man before them—Joseph, sold as a slave. They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons, till what he foretold came to pass, till the word of the Lord proved him true. The king sent and released him, the ruler of peoples set him free. He made him master of his household, ruler over all he possessed, to instruct his princes as he pleased and teach his elders wisdom.
Then Israel entered Egypt; Jacob resided as a foreigner in the land of Ham. The Lord made his people very fruitful; he made them too numerous for their foes, whose hearts he turned to hate his people, to conspire against his servants.

Prayer focus
May we eagerly desire your gifts, O God.