Description
Reflection accompanying image Yorkshire Dales with walls, barns and text 1Cor 1:17
These stone walls and barns in Swaledale speak of possessiveness and purpose, ownership and effort, division and integrity.
Although the landscape is segregated and demarcated in this way, there is an underlying unity of purpose at work as the farming year unfolds in this part of Yorkshire. This is why the image is an appropriate visual metaphor for understanding the tensions that Paul is addressing as he juxtaposes local infighting with the primary purpose of the Gospel. The passage reeks of small-minded possesiveness, ownership and division. What is described is not a pretty sight and is all too familiar.
What Paul seeks to do is put this tendency to demarcate and segregate into the deeper unifying context of God's purpose in Jesus.
Continues ...