The acorn and the oak are the same one. The seed come to life, the fruit grows the living, and both are one and the same.

As for our community of faith, we commit to tend each other, one-by-one; to nurture the neighborhood by loving our neighbors each; to strengthen the web of life right now, from right where we are.

Yet it takes only a glance to notice how other lands where hearts are beating beside us, hearts and lands to which we are just as closely connected, other lives no less entitled to care, with hopes and dreams as pure and true as ours.

Is it even practical to work for the promise of world peace right now? There are hearts, lives, families, institutions, laws, addictions, and relationships in need of peace right here already. How do we divvy the time? How do we halve the attention and still make a difference together?

What if they weren’t other lands and other hearts at all? How would we live if the borders of community and world good were just and only as tough as the acorn shell. What if loving the world and rebuilding the community close were the sign and sprout of themselves and each other, the acorn and the oak, one and the same?

What would we need to imagine to love the world as ourselves? A bigger togetherness.