You hear the term a house dived a lot when Michigan and Michigan State play each other and if you have family members that attended both schools under the same roof. What team do you root for?
Now think about the term, “House Divided” outside of a sports arena.
How do I find love and acceptance in a divided house?
In a world where we desire to find belonging and acceptance, we can many times find hardships & resistance from people all around us. In a world where people have differences of opinions, there is going to be hostility.
Jesus lived in a world where people thought and lived in a law that Moses set for hundreds of years. On top of that, Jesus had to face the Roman culture that believed nothing of a Christian God or way of living a Christian life. In the house that was divided in Jesus’ time, the end result was him losing his life. In the end, it saved their lives but just think if everyone actually listened to him and followed the teaching that he was laying down.
Wherever you go and interact with people who think differently from you there is going to the trouble. Especially when you work in an environment of people who have done things for one way for so long. When you go in a new work setting and try to change or do things differently you are going to have people critique and react in a way against the paradigm they have lived.
The easiest thing to do is either ignore or show hostility to the ones that persecute you for being different, but Jesus is calling us to bring these situations to him. Jesus asks us to forgive those who persecute us and exile us for our different ways. If we react with love, the other person will hopefully one day see that we are not that different after all. We are all children of the King and all want to be loved the same no matter how we live or think.