The Wi-Fi That Runs Through the Walls

In 2018, a small church in Christchurch, New Zealand, shared a building with a Korean Presbyterian congregation. They worshiped at different hours, spoke different languages, and rarely crossed paths. Then the earthquake recovery dragged on, and both congregations lost their weekday meeting spaces. The pastor of each group, neither speaking the other's language fluently, sat down with a translator and a shared calendar.

Within months, something unexpected happened. The Korean congregation started bringing banchan — small side dishes — to leave in the shared kitchen for Wednesday night Bible study. The New Zealand congregation reciprocated with baking for Sunday afternoon fellowship. A retired Kiwi electrician rewired the sound system so it could switch between both groups' equipment without disconnecting anything. Children from both congregations invented games at combined potlucks that needed no translation at all.

No one signed a unity agreement. No committee drafted a resolution. The oneness grew the way a vine moves through a trellis — slowly, naturally, finding every opening.

This is what Jesus prayed for in John 17. Not uniformity, but the kind of unity that mirrors the relationship between the Father and the Son — distinct yet inseparable, different yet perfectly one. "That they may be one, as We are one," He prayed. The glory the Father gave the Son, the Son gives to us, and it becomes the very thing that binds us across every wall we build.

The Almighty does not erase our differences. He runs His love straight through them.