Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

A reading titled Something Deep in Binding was written by Win Collier.

Amina, an Iraqi immigrant and Joseph, an American from birth, attended a political protest on opposite sides.

We've been taught to believe that those who are separated by ethnicity and politics

carry unbridled animosity toward each other. However, when a small mob accosted Joseph,

trying to set his shirt on fire, Amina rushed to his defense.

I don't think we could be any further apart as people, Joseph told a reporter.

And yet, it was just kind of like this common, that's not okay, moment.

Something deeper than politics knit Amina and Joseph together.

Though we often have genuine disagreements with one another, substantial differences we often can't ignore,

there are far deeper realities that bind us together.

We're all created by God and bound together in one beloved human family. God has created each of us, regardless

of gender, social class, ethnic identity or political persuasion in his own image. Whatever

else might be true, God is reflected in both you and me. Further, He's given us a shared

purpose to fill and rule God's world with wisdom and me. Further, he's given us a shared purpose to fill and rule God's world

with wisdom and care. Whenever we forget how we're bound together in God, we do damage to

ourselves and others. But whenever we come together in His grace and truth, we participate in his desire to make a good and flourishing world.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Genesis chapter 1, verses 26 through 28.

Then God said, let us make mankind in our image in our likeness so that they

may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky over the livestock and all the wild animals

and over all the creatures that move along the ground so god created mankind mankind in his own image, and the image of God

he created them. Male and female, he created them. God blessed them and said to them,

...