I recently had COVID, which gave me a chance to watch some of the Commonwealth Games in Birmingham. As I was watching, and the Australian medal tally climbed, I began to reflect on the nature of winning. Victory comes in two forms, relative and absolute.

Back in 1970, Robert Greenleaf published an essay entitled “Servant Leadership” in which he explored issues of power and authority in the corporate world. He concluded that, from a moral perspective, the “only authority deserving one’s allegiance is that which is freely and knowingly granted by the led to the leader in response to, and in proportion to, the clearly evident servant stature of the leader.”

I’ve been thinking recently about unity amongst Christians. What unites us are not the ways we do things, or even some of the things we believe. If we had to be the same in everything, that would be uniformity, not unity. And if we spent our time insisting that everyone else become like us and think like us and act like us, there would never be unity, only conflict…