“Beloved, while I was very diligent to write to you concerning our common salvation…”
(Jude 3, NKJV)
It was Saturday afternoon, and I sat at the picnic table next to the podcast studio near the top of the Mountain. A summer afternoon breeze made our outdoor meeting of the Laurel Mountain Ministries board of directors comfortable.
Several hundred yards away and down the hill, hidden from my sight by a cottage and a grove of trees, a Spanish-speaking church from West Reading, Pennsylvania, prepared for its annual picnic under the campus pavilion. This was the third summer the church picnicked on the Mountain, and each year they brought a larger group.
Earlier that afternoon, the congregation gathered at our cross-shaped baptismal pool to baptize a group of new believers. One by one, the new converts entered the water and publicly identified themselves with Christ while their church family gathered around the pool to support and celebrate them. After the baptisms, the congregation made its way down to the pavilion for its picnic.
Most groups visiting the Mountain sing by the baptismal pool or inside the chapel. Normally, people using the pavilion enjoy recorded music. It’s easy. So when live voices carried up the Mountain, I noticed.
I listened to two or three songs. I didn’t recognize the songs, and I don’t speak Spanish, but I could sense the love and peace of God in their heartfelt worship. I saw it earlier around the baptismal pool. Now I heard it in their voices as they readied for the picnic.
One thought came to me. This is what the Mountain was for.
I’ve sat through countless meetings where the business of ministry got done. But the work on the Mountain didn’t end when the meetings adjourned. Over the years, I cut grass and picked up rocks. I plowed snow and did whatever else the Mountain needed. More than once, I went home with dirty clothes and sore muscles that reminded me the next day what I did the day before.
That afternoon, for the first time during a meeting, I could hear the reason behind all the work.
The visiting pastor is a realtor I know through occasional real estate business, and I regularly drive past her church in West Reading. Other than that, our paths rarely cross. I couldn’t name anyone in the congregation or tell you the story of a single person who entered the baptismal water earlier that afternoon.
Still, I knew something important about each of them. They followed Christ into the water, and later their worship traveled up the Mountain. The Spanish words were beyond my understanding, but what we shared wasn’t.
Jude called it “our common salvation.” It’s the faith we share.
That common salvation reaches across differences that could otherwise divide us and keep believers strangers. I could pass someone from that congregation in a grocery store tomorrow and never know that we spent Saturday afternoon on the same Mountain. We might struggle to carry on a conversation. Yet both of us could point to Christ and say, in different languages, that He is ours and we are His.
That means the believers using the Mountain that afternoon were my brothers and sisters in Christ. We share in the love and peace of God.
And the peace I heard in their worship wasn’t something we created or held exclusively. Jesus leaves that peace with us. He told His disciples, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you” (John 14:27, NKJV).
Because His peace lives in each of us, we can recognize it in others. That afternoon, I felt it flowing through the trees and climbing the Mountain.
Most people who read this will never sit at that picnic table near the top of the Mountain or hear that worship coming through the trees. But encounters like mine, where you recognize another Christian, can happen anywhere. We cross paths with believers every day whose language or worship seem unfamiliar, and sometimes we know little more about them than the Christ we share.
But we all know Christ, and that makes us one.
And then, when we recognize Christ and His love and peace in another person who isn’t like us, Jude’s words take on new meaning: “our common salvation.” The one who was once a stranger now becomes a brother or sister.
About the Author
David Johnson is the co-founder and Director of Ministry at Laurel Mountain Ministries. He is an ordained minister, retired attorney, Bible teacher, and author who enjoys helping people discover God’s truth through practical Bible study. His latest book, PEACEMAKER: A Twelve Session Journey into the Heart of God’s Peace, is available on Amazon.
Want to become an author for Inspiration On The Mountain? Read our writer guidelines here