Live in Harmony
READ
Here's something nobody tells you about devotion: it's not about getting it right every time. It's about persevering when you get it wrong.
Let’s take a moment to read Romans 12:16a:
"Live in harmony with one another"
REFLECT
"Live in harmony with one another" doesn't mean you'll never have conflict. It doesn't mean everyone will always agree or that relationships will be easy. It means you commit to working through the mess together instead of bailing when things get hard.
Harmony isn't the absence of tension. It's the presence of commitment.
Think about an orchestra. When musicians play in harmony, it's not because every note is identical. It's because different instruments, different sounds, different tones all come together under the direction of a conductor to create something beautiful. They're not all playing the same thing, but they're all playing toward the same purpose.
That's what living in harmony looks like. It's not uniformity. It's unity in diversity. It's people with different perspectives, different personalities, different preferences all choosing to stay committed to each other and to the same mission.
But let's be real: harmony requires patience. It requires humility. It requires the willingness to work through disagreements instead of just avoiding them or bulldozing through them. And that's hard. It's much easier to surround yourself with people who think exactly like you do, who never challenge you, who never frustrate you.
But that's not community. That's an echo chamber. And echo chambers don't help us grow. They don't refine us. They don't push us toward becoming more like Jesus.
True devotion—sustained devotion—happens in the context of real relationships with real people who are sometimes annoying, sometimes wrong, sometimes difficult. And it's precisely in those moments, when harmony feels impossible, that we have to make a choice: Will we stay? Will we work through this? Will we keep pursuing unity even when it's costly?
This is what perseverance looks like. Not perfection, but persistence. Not getting it right every time, but refusing to give up. Not avoiding conflict, but choosing to address it in love and move through it together.
So where do you need to practice patience right now? What relationship is testing your commitment to harmony? What conflict are you avoiding that actually needs to be addressed? And what would it look like to stay in it, to work through it, to pursue unity even when it's uncomfortable?
RESPOND
Take a moment to process what God might be leading you to do in light of what you read.
Where in your life are you confusing harmony with uniformity or conflict-avoidance?
What relationship is testing your commitment to stay and work through difficulty right now?
How does perseverance in community—not perfection—sustain devotion over time?
REST
Take a moment to rest in God’s presence and consider one thing you can take away from your time reading, then close your devotional experience by praying:
God, living in harmony is harder than it sounds. Give me patience when relationships are difficult. Give me humility when I'm wrong. Give me courage to address conflict instead of avoiding it. Help me to stay committed to unity, to persevere through the mess, to keep showing up even when it's hard. Amen.