Family Ties

My dad died shortly before I was married, and a few years later my mom moved out of the area. Although Dave and I intended to start a family, the years passed without children. Dave worked second shift, and as the long, solitary evenings rolled by, a kind of darkness settled into my heart… but I also discovered a wonderful truth during that time.

A new pastor and his wife moved into town and began to take some of us under their wing in rather unconventional ways. Soon Ollie ( an elderly widow in our small church) and I were regularly joining the pastor and his wife on those long evenings for lively games of Uno. What fun we had, forgetting disappointment and old age and church boards and all our various challenges, and just chortling (and cheating a bit!) together. Now, when I look back at those difficult years in my life, the memory is punctuated with the laughter and love we shared around a kitchen table. It perfectly illustrates the Psalmist’s words: “God sets the lonely in families” (PS. 68:6 NIV).

It seems to me that’s the way He intends the church, His body, to work in these days, too. Many of us did not have a mother to celebrate with last weekend, and will not have a father to send a card to in June, or children to cherish on Children’s Day. Yet what an friend once declared is surely true: “There are people in this church who are more like flesh-and-blood to me than some members of my own family.” The bond they shared with their fellow Christians was stronger. The Blood they shared was thicker. The Spirit affirmed that they were children of the Father, and therefore brothers and sisters of the closest order.

Jesus said, in some of His last words from the cross, “Woman, behold thy son,” and “Son, Behold your mother.” He was speaking to His mother, about to lose her precious son, and to His beloved disciple, John. And with those words He created a family bond where none had before existed, and began a healing in Mary and John’s hearts.

That’s what He wants to do in the church today, too. To set the lonely in families. To give spiritual mothers and fathers and children to those with empty arms and aching hearts, to those whose sun is setting each evening on days that were already dark.

What does that mean for you? I don’t know. Maybe you are an older woman and can become a mother to a younger wife and mom who is struggling. Maybe you are a single gal who can take a wriggling class of children into your heart and under your wing. Maybe you are a grandpa whose grandkids aren’t nearby, and there’s a teen or two who’d benefit by hanging out at your house.

But we can’t create family ties on our own. God sets the lonely in families – it is His arrangement and initiative. So let’s tell Him what we long for, and wait expectantly for Him.

And in response may the Lord look down on FAC and say, here and there, “Child, here is your mother in Christ. Young man, here is your father. Single person, here is your child, or your spiritual parents, or your sister in the Lord.” Your special next-of-kin in the family of God.