We are family - Devotion for 5/15/07

We are family – Devotion for 5/15/07

Several years ago when our oldest son was only about 3 or 4, we were riding along the road one day and we were just talking about all of our family. We were asking Jacob to name all of his family, and he was doing great naming out immediate family as well as grandparents, aunts, uncles, and even cousins. But then Jacob started adding a few more names: “Mrs. Laura, Mr. Greg, Kristin, Mr. Richard . . .” We realized that Jacob had strayed from listing relatives and he had begun to name some of the people from the church we were at. So I interrupted him and began to explain, “Jacob, Mrs. Laura, Mr. Greg, Kristin, and Mr. Richard all go to the same church we are at, but they are not your family.” Jacob looked at me with all sincerity (that I could see through the rear-view mirror) and corrected me, “Dad, because we go the same church they are family!”

Jacob spoke a truth that we often overlook and forget. I learned that same truth at church when I was a boy just like him. Every Sunday at the close of the worship service my daddy would instruct the congregation to “reach out and take the hand of someone else so that everyone is holding someone else’s hand.” We would do this for the closing prayer, and it became a symbol of the family that we were – that even though we had come together as a congregation from different backgrounds and different experiences, and even though we may have come there with our family or all by ourselves, when we gather together in the name of Jesus Christ we become one – one family, one body, united by the blood of Jesus Christ.

This morning I read Ephesians 4:1-16, and in verses 4-6 I was reminded of “my family”: “There is one body and one Spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all who is over all and through all and in all.” We are all called in the one hope of the one Lord, and as we share in the one faith we become one family. And today although we may be spread far out from each other, distance cannot separate the one Spirit that we share and breath in. We truly are one – one family. We have become brothers and sisters in Christ because we share the same Father.