In Genesis 11, when everyone still spoke a common language, we hear of a people who wanted to be secure and stay together, by building a city featuring a tower up to the heavens. We have been calling the ‘Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil’ that Adam and Eve ate from the ‘Tree of Entitlement’. These people together wanted to be ‘like God’, except without God. The God plan was for people to fill the earth (Gen 1:28), but these just clumped together for safety. There was a sense of group entitlement. That is always the danger for any nation, group or church who are determined to be right all the time, and that think their way is the only way.

Well, the God who had to come down to actually view what they thought was so high is not a God of uniformity at all costs. Even within God there is diversity. “Let us confuse their language…’, and so the tower-to-heaven project was never completed.

The confusion of languages was reversed on the day of Pentecost, when pilgrims in Jerusalem heard the disciples tell about Christ in their own languages. There is a wonderful joy in working together on big projects, and being part of something that is successful. There is also the servant heart of Christ, which leads us, in our diverse ways, to support and help each other, in the little ways that others never see. Both the big and the little are vital in God’s way of doing things.