Hi there, and welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

Our reading titled United Diversity in Christ was written by Monica LaRose.

In his essay, Service and the Spectrum, Professor Daniel Bowman, Jr. writes of the difficulty of navigating decisions about how to serve his church as an autistic person.

He explains, autistic people have to forge a new path forward every single time a unique path that takes into account, mental, emotional,

and physical energy, alone and recharging time, sensory inputs and comfort level, time of day,

whether or not we're being valued for our strengths and accommodated for our needs rather than

excluded for perceived deficits and much more. For many people, Bowman writes, such decisions,

while reorienting people's time and energy, likely will not undo them. Those same decisions

might well undo me.

Bowman believes that the vision of mutuality Paul describes in 1st Corinthians 12

could be a healing solution. There, in verses 4 through 6, Paul describes God uniquely

gifting each of his people for the common good.

Each is an indispensable member of Christ's body.

When churches come to understand each person's unique God-given wiring and gifting,

instead of pressuring everyone to help in the same way,

they can support their members to serve in ways that fit their giftings.

In this way, each person can find flourishing and wholeness and be secure in their valued place in Christ's body.

Today's Our Daily Bread Devotional scripture reading is from 1 Corinthians chapter 12,

verses 12 through 14 and 21 through 27.

Just as a body, though one has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ. For we were all baptized by one spirit, so as to form one body, whether Jews or Gentiles, slave or free,

and we were all given the one spirit to drink. Even so, the body is not made up of one part, but of many.

Now picking up with verse 21,

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