Family

Our whole family is excited for my mom’s visit!  She arrives tomorrow morning from Pennsylvania, USA, and will stay for a little over a week.  It’s been a little over a year since I last some my family when we had returned home for a month last summer.  We talk regularly on the phone, but it’s not the same.

My wife is taking the girls to visit her family in New Mexico next Spring.  It will have been 5 years since we last visited them.

There is just something special about family.  It’s not like my friends whom I chose, and could walk away from.  We are connected by blood.  Sometimes we argue and sometimes, we can’t stand each other, but we are always there for each other.  There is a mysterious commitment that is hard to walk away from.

When I entered a relationship with God, I joined another family, also bound by blood – the blood of Jesus.  I’ve traveled to many places around the world visiting various churches, India & Haiti, hispanic churches, black churches in Arkansas and Pennsylvania, even was a member of a black gospel choir.  (There is a funny story there as one of the few white guys in a 100 person black gospel choir which I’ll save for another day.)  In all of them there is an instant connection as a fellow member of God’s family.

Sometimes we argue and disagree amongst ourselves or with other churches, but there is a bond between us even stronger then the human family bond, for the blood of Jesus is far greater. 

I love both my families, my natural family and my church family.  I don’t know where I’d be without either one of them.