Brotherly love - Devotion for 9/24/08

Brotherly love – Devotion for 9/24/08

As you may know, I am the father of two boys who love to fight with each other. Sometimes I truly believe that they wake up with the expressed purpose and intent on beating each other up. One minute these two can be getting along fine, and the next thing you know shoes are being thrown across the room and headlocks quickly ensue. However, when they are on the soccer field it is a completely different story. Monday night at soccer practice we had a scrimmage with another team, and one kid on the other team slammed in and kinda shoved Aaron down in an attempt to keep possession of the ball (which Aaron had already taken away from him, by the way). Once Aaron hit the ground, I noticed his brother Jacob, and I saw Jacob quickly marking which kid had just slammed his brother. Jacob promptly left his position, swooped in and stole the ball back – along with a pretty decent forearm to the chest. Now the thing that was funny about it to me was that earlier there had been a couple of rough plays, and Jacob certainly did not react in the same way when the other players had been roughed up. He came in to his brother’s defense, I guess because he thinks he is the only one who is allowed to knock down his brother!

So this morning when I read from Matthew 12:46-50, I got to thinking about my boys. In this passage, Jesus has been talking to the masses, and the scripture tells us that his mom and his brothers were at the back of the crowd, but they wanted to speak to Jesus. So someone got the word to Jesus that the family was there and wanted to speak to him, and Jesus responds, “Who is My mother and who are My brothers?” Then He stretched out his hands towards those around him and said, “Behold, My mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother and sister and mother.” Jesus saw beyond the typical familial relationships, and he created a new one – one with all who serve God the father. Granted we don’t know what happened after that, but I’m guessing Mary gave him THE look that only a mother can give, and Jesus probably then said, “Yes ma’am, I’m coming.”

What would happen if we truly looked at the world as our brother or sister? If your brother was hungry, wouldn’t you want to give him something to eat? If your sister was hurting, wouldn’t you want to comfort her? If we saw injustice happening to your mother, wouldn’t you want to stand up and fight for her? Let’s look today at the world in a different way – looking at it as Jesus looked at it.