Family

"While he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was moved with pity. He ran to the boy, clasped him in his arms and kissed him". Luke 15:20

"Can a woman forget her baby at the breast, feel no pity for the child she has borne? Even if these were to forget, I sall not forget you. Look, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands". Isaiah 49:15

Aunica, a woman in my missional community, passed a note during the service that said, "what is community" and as it went it gathered definitions. Two descriptions that caught my attention were 'unconditional love' and 'family'.

Sometimes you can't see something when it is right in front of your face. Until I moved away I did not understand how my family culture had formed me. When I moved away I still had the adolescent mindset that I was a product of my own choices and personality. After I moved from home I began the long process of examining what my family relationships meant to me growing up, and what they mean to me now. As I went through this process I became sensitive to the way others have been shaped by their families. The deeper I would go with people the more I realized that pains, fears, insecurities as well as virtues and values are often connected with a person's relationship with their family, either something that has been passed down or something that is reactionary.

Family to most people probably means nucleus family, but I am no so naive to think this is the only community people have grown up in. Many 'families' and 'early family experiences' are quite a bit more complex than the traditional nucleus family. Family can be a general term, it can mean the people you grew up with and the people you trusted, the people who know you best and who you are most yourself around. New families can form through new kinds of community. Still, I believe these non-traditional families are close imitations, hinting at kind of intimacy that happens between a committed husband and wife and the children they raise together. However, even the most stable loving families will deeply hurt one another. It is unavoidable. Intimacy in a family does not come without pain. Our family sees our ugliest self, and we must trust that we will be loved all the same (you should probably see 'gospel' here). All community points us towards family, and all family points us towards God.

What is it about family that effects us so deeply? I believe God created family as a metaphor of Himself. Family shows us how God relates to Himself (within the trinity) and also how He relates to us as humans. Family is probably the closest picture we have of God and therefore most intimate thing we can experience as humans. God has pursued us like a lover and adopted us like children, he is our father. He saw our ugliest self and pursued us in unconditional love all the same. These relationships lie close to his heart, therefore close to ours.

All that said I would like to thank my family for pointing me towards God. Thanks especially to my parents for demonstrating love, vulnerability, humility and for showing all of us that life with Christ is never comfortable or easy. None of us are perfect, but hopefully we can trust Christ where we all fell short in loving one another.

Christmas pictures are the only time we look normal.