{"id":56,"date":"2025-01-23T18:40:26","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T18:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/?p=56"},"modified":"2025-01-23T18:40:26","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T18:40:26","slug":"harmony","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/?p=56","title":{"rendered":"Harmony"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This week, 18th to 25th January, is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Since joining a small fellowship in our town 18 months ago (Hope Christian Community), this theme has been on my mind a lot. I am ashamed to say that, for 40 years as a Christian, to some extent I thought that, unless you were in \u2018one of our types of churches\u2019 then you were somehow an inferior Christian. These past months, a deep awareness of there only been One Church has been growing in me.

Our next-door neighbour, who has been our neighbour and friend the whole time we have lived in our current home (27 years), is an Anglican Christian. She is part of St John\u2019s church whose building is just round the corner from the chapel where our church meets. Until recently, apart from attending the St John\u2019s jumble sales (which are always well attended by the community) I had very little to do with the church. Anglican traditions and style of worship are different to those I am accustomed to. Nevertheless, after chatting with our friend and learning a little about these traditions, I have come to appreciate them and even join in with some of them.

Furthermore, over these past months, I have kept bumping into a friend who I knew when our children were little. She and her family are Roman Catholic. Although she still lives in the same town, I hadn\u2019t seen her for years. Before Christmas, I bumped into her in Lidl. I said, \u2018I don\u2019t know why I keep bumping into you!\u2019 As I walked down the next isle, the Lord whispered in my ear, \u2018It\u2019s because I\u2019m showing you that there is only one Church.\u2019 So, I about turned and went back to speak with her. We chatted about how it\u2019s time that Christians across this planet need to put their differences aside because the differences are not important; they\u2019re peripheral. It\u2019s time we focus on our shared hope in the one gospel of Jesus Christ.

Last evening, in our Bible study of the \u2018one another\u2019 verses, Mark shared the verse with, \u2018Live in harmony with one another\u2019. Those words resonated with me immediately. The word \u2018harmony\u2019 is most commonly associated with music. Being part of Pontypridd Community Choir, I am very familiar with harmonies (specifically the soprano parts). Everyone is singing the same song, but the different harmonies make the song even more beautiful.

This week, in our prayers for Christian unity, let\u2019s come together to sing the same song. Let\u2019s appreciate the beautiful harmonies of the different expressions of The Church in every corner of the Earth and let\u2019s sing out loud so that those who listen can enjoy the beauty of the song that we are all singing together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This week, 18th to 25th January, is the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Since joining a small fellowship in our town 18 months ago (Hope Christian Community), this theme has been on my mind a lot. I am ashamed to say that, for 40 years as a Christian, to some extent I thought that, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-church","tag-week-of-prayer-for-christian-unity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/talkingyorkie.wales\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}