Acts 17:24-28 24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.' NIV The one golden thread that binds each person on the planet together is that we all share the same common origin. The Apostle Paul talks about this when he addresses a group of philosophers on Mars Hill in Acts 17 and tells them that the God of heaven and earth has a divine plan for each one of their lives.
Even though they had pagan beliefs, Paul told them they all shared the same divine connection to God by virtue of their common ancestry to humanity's first couple... Adam and Eve. So in essence, if they went back far enough in their own generational line, they would inevitably discover that they were all related by virtue of being part of the human race. And not only were they part of the human race, but each one of them was an image bearer of Almighty God (Genesis 1:26-27) and His beloved offspring. In this very short but very powerful sermon, Paul tried to convince them of their immeasurable value to God and His nearness to them. While some mocked him, others responded in faith and chose to repent of the ways they had worshipped idols and their own wrong thinking about who they thought God was. It is the same today as it was back then. When we dare to believe that we are not just the random result of evolution but are divinely connected to a loving Father who knit us together in our mother's womb, then life takes on a whole new meaning. For there is more to life than we could have ever imagined because of our divine origin. And when we begin to see those around us as much loved offspring of Almighty God, no longer will we see each other through the lens of things that divide us. But like the Apostle Paul, we can declare on the housetops how close God is to each one of us and how He has a Father's heart for every person on the planet. For there is only one human race, and thankfully, we are all a part of it. |