Designed For MoreSample

Welcome To The Murmuration

We wrote this devotional for you. 

As a follower of Christ, you play a key role in His collective body and movement on earth - a role of eternal significance. But your individual potential can only be fully realized within community. The only way to find our role and live it effectively is to awaken to God’s design for us to fit into a technicolor tapestry of unity within diversity. Unless each of us has a moment when we catch God’s design for unity in the Church, we will only have minimal progress towards unity. After all, unity starts with U-N-I.

Our hope is that this devotional sparks that exact sort of inspiring moment. A moment that becomes a spiritual journey through which God reveals afresh to you how deeply unity matters and the vital part you play. 

Murmurations

A Murmuration is one of nature's most beautiful displays of unified and collective movement. Named for the sound created by thousands of wings flapping, a Murmuration occurs as a flock of starlings comes together in the evening to roost. To watch a flock of just fifty birds flying in unison is amazing, but now imagine a Murmuration with hundreds of thousands of birds. At dusk, as if breaking forth from an organized huddle, the birds suddenly take to the sky en masse. They swoop, dive, contract and then explode in unison with incredible rhythm, speed, efficiency, and finesse. 

Despite the rapid and close-quarter movements, they consistently avoid collisions. Like a liquid cloud that has come to life, the birds create epic sweeping motions as if led by a single conductor. 

The synchronized maneuvers are simply spectacular. 

It is this same spectacular and synchronized unity that Jesus prays for in John 17, when He prays for you, for me and for His Church to be one. Not only does Romans 1 tell us that creation reveals the mysteries of God, Jesus himself told us to “look to the birds” to learn vital lessons. 

In Designed For More we use both scripture and nature to help spark a movement towards unity in our fragmented faith community. God designed His followers to be so much more, but division has held us back. We can look to the natural phenomena of flocking starlings to learn how we can begin to unleash Christ’s vision for unity in our deeply divided world. We, too, are called to “murmurate” and captivate the world through our unity!

The answer to Jesus’ prayer begins with you. It’s not up to you, and it’s not even ultimately about you, but as a believer, you are an irreplaceable part of God’s Church. We hope God shows Himself to you in new ways through this devotional!

To learn more about Designed For More book and authors Mike DeVito and Lucas Ramirez, visit www.DesignedForMoreBook.com