Daily Bible Reading Plans to help you read and understand God’s Word

In the American South where I grew up, the joke goes that you can find a church on every corner. Maybe it’s an exaggeration, but it certainly feels true, from sprawling multi-campus megachurches to the one that met for a time in an empty storefront at my hometown shopping mall.

Now I live in a New England city where I can stand on my porch and hear the bells of the local Catholic parish peal at 6:00 p.m. Some say we’re the least churched part of the country, but I still see our vibrant history in every simple town church. My own community meets in a century-old building with towering stained glass and a modern light system. Meanwhile, in parts of China and the Middle East, underground churches flourish despite hostile conditions, and our neighbors to the Global South are among the fastest growing branches of the Christian faith’s family tree.

In just over 2,000 years, the Church has become so much bigger than the group of disciples that first walked with Jesus. Sprawling, messy, and yes, often dysfunctional, we now reach into every far-flung corner of the world. In today’s reading, we get a glimpse of the earliest days of a fledgling Church and everything this family could be.

The first Christians were a people driven by bold belief and unshakeable trust. Herod, Pilate, the Roman Empire, and even some Jewish leaders chose unthinkable violence against Jesus (Acts 4:27), but His followers didn’t answer with revenge. Instead, they came together as a force of goodness, care, and love. No one among them knew need, because “the entire group of those who believed were of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but instead they held everything in common” (Acts 4:32).

This leads me to wonder, could this kind of unity be possible in the Church today? We are a mixed bag, with a history of triumphs and failures. Our history is darkened by internal wars, conquering Crusades, scandals, and secret sins. And our history holds great good too—the creation of hospitals, the civil rights movement, and the notion that every human has inherent worth and dignity.

Perhaps Jesus was imagining this messy, beautiful future when He prayed for not only His disciples but every follower to come: “May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me” (John 17:21).

What if we came to see the strength in our diversity? What if we rejected the chase for power and the need to be right and instead reoriented everything toward a deepening friendship with Jesus? When we let go of our fear and open our hands, when we ensure there are no needy among us, we may find ourselves living as citizens of God’s kingdom, not an earthly empire.