Mtr Taylor Devine

Dear Friends,

This morning’s Daily Office reading is one of my favorite passages in the Bible. There’s a reason this text has inspired so many songs; it is beautiful and inspiring and has always, in a peaceful way, made sense to me.

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit.

“Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,’ that would not make it any less a part of the body.” And on it goes; read and pray with the whole thing!

I really came to faith as a young teenager, and scripture like this was understandable and met my deep yearning. Of course teenagers are supposed to be individual—figuring out what your gifts are is part of our development—and wondering where you belong is part of personal development.

Teenagehood is an embarrassingly fast period of change, but if we’re lucky as adults and keep growing, we can meet these questions with a little more groundedness, and with more gentleness. Letting ourselves grow is a leap of faith. Trusting that God can use the gifts that we have to offer as we grow and change is both a leap of faith and a comfort.

We are not alone, and the body of Christ is meant to be made up of diversity. Being yourself within community is not easy, but it is important.

In Christ,

—Mtr Taylor