Some may recognize the words of this title as coming from the Nicene Creed. If you are in a church which has used this this creed, it’s possible that you, like me, have blown by with little thought the tiny yet significant word ‘one’.
If you have noticed the word, you may have had cause to chuckle or to weep recognizing that ‘one’ seems to carry such little weight in a world where every town has dozens of Christian denominations and sects. (I once heard that the US could ‘boast’ of 16 thousand denominations.) That all seems to make a mockery of the word ‘one’.
And yet, there can be a unity, a oneness, experienced, enjoyed, and sometimes displayed in spite of the diversity.
Early this week, I had the joy of meeting with a couple of pastors serving independent pentecostal and evangelical churches in Oviedo. We met for an hour of prayer, and it was an encouraging and joyful experience of that ‘one’ that meant so much to Jesus.
There may be much that divides us. But that need not prevent us from standing together upon what unites.