Family

Look how many brothers and sisters I have in the picture above, and that’s not all of them! No, Mom was not extremely busy in her younger years, LOL! In the Bible our heavenly Father says,

So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God by believing in Christ. Galatians 3:26

and in 2 Corinthians 6:18, God confirms it saying,

I will be your father, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.

One last one; I love this one,

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! 1 John 3:1

The reason I am willing to call so many strangers my family is because I have learned so much from my biological family. We are similar, yet immensely different. I have three sisters and a brother. I tend to be very passionate about seeking God and pleasing him, even wanting to be a nun when I was little (glad that did not happen!). A couple of my sisters have made comments over the years about my being too religious. My brother is so patient with me! He listens and nods. He lets me talk about everything I’m learning and seeing God do, even though he doesn’t quite share my enthusiasm. We all vent our frustrations with each other to Mom and she, in her great wisdom and experience, irons out the rough edges in our family. Still, every holiday we want to get together. My siblings and I want to see each other, hug each other, share how life has been going, and marvel at how fast the kids have grown.

Our family in Christ is the exact same. I don’t agree with some Roman Catholic traditions because I cannot find any evidence of them in the Bible. I don’t like how some churches remind their congregation to tithe more often than other churches. I don’t think God wants our focus to be more on a regular receiving of Communion than on the serving and loving of others he commands us to do outside of the church building (Mark 12:33 and Matthew 20:28)

Still, God asks us to love each other, accept each other, and be patient with each other. What happened to being able to disagree peacefully and leave it at that? There are enemies in our country trying to divide us, and it’s working. However, if we see each other as family, I believe we can remember we don’t always agree with our family, but we still love them. After all, they are family! We have some white sheep in the family, there are definitely some black sheep in the family, but most of us are gray sheep trying to find our way.

So I love my brothers and sisters…ALL of them! I promise to be honest with you. I promise to stand for what I believe to be true. I promise to disagree with you peacefully, but I also promise you I want to see you at Christmas time. I want to hear how your life has been going, and I want to see the pictures of how big your kids and pets have gotten since the last time I saw you. What do you expect? We’re family!