new relationship

My team at work is finishing up reading and discussing Reconcile: Conflict Transformation For Ordinary Christians by John Paul Lederach.  What a necessary book for me to read in a world so torn apart by conflict.  

Toward the end of the book, Ledrach references Ephesians 2:13-16, and talks about a new humanity through Christ.  

"In the life of Jesus, holiness is defined more than anything else by his persistent movement toward people, their pain, and the formation of a new relationship.  

In this text (Eph. 2: 13-16), Paul declares that through Christ, through a person who reaches out across lines of hostility, through his very flesh and person, enemies meet and are held together. Thus they form a new humanity, a new relationship.  What we find here is the most necessary part of the mission methodology: movement into relationship.

From the perspective of God's purpose, the example of Christ Jesus is clear.  It is not possible to pursue reconciliation except through people who risk the journey to relate across the social divides.  In this way they help make present the reconciling love of God.  In other words, through people who reach across the lines of hostility, a new relationship between enemies becomes possible."  

This passage speaks to and challenges my relational poverty.  To the degree that I stay apart from or move away from people I consider other or enemy, is the extent that I keep the reconciling love of God from doing a new thing with both of our lives.  Jesus, help me to risk on this journey of moving toward.