see the spark of God in each individual

Tuesday January 10th, Acts 19: Paul traveled through the interior provinces. Finally, he came to Ephesus, where he found several believers. 2 "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" he asked them. "No," they replied, "we don't know what you mean. We haven't even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." OK, one would think they need to go back and take confirmation all over again. What is interesting is that their belief is not questioned. For Paul their belief was what was important, the rest, getting their systematic theology in order was just housekeeping. Perhaps we could benefit from such an open approach when talking about other believers. There is this unholy tendency to think that we somehow have the "truth" and that others are wrong. We tend to fight wars and commit unspeakable acts to maintain our view of the "truth" about religion; which really makes it more about us than about God. In the kingdom there are many rooms, maybe we need to focus more on faith and take care of what we feel are important details later. Perhaps in this world if we could see the spark of God in each individual we would start putting as much effort into getting along as we do into solving conflicts with war. The Mideast might be a very different place today should that happen and Hamas and Israel could work on building a better world rather than on building better walls, rockets and bombs.