Wayfaring Stranger

Brotherly Love and Family

It's been a long time since I've posted. A lot has happened in my life since July. I am now a full fledged homemaker after 10 1/2 years of full time work outside my home. I think it's a bigger job than the office was! It's also so much more satisfying. Anyway, I will work at keeping this blog up to date with my deep and very important thoughts (Ha!) and try to make it worth reading for anyone who happens to stumble in.

I've been thinking a lot about family. It is that time of year, of course. I'm spending more time with extended family and celebrating in ways that seem to change more and more often as the older ones are carried off to their new home in heaven and the younger ones are left to carry on. The only thing wrong with this whole idea is that I've suddenly filled in the place left by the older ones. That just feels all wrong and very weird!

Yet it isn't that family I am spending the most time thinking about. I am thinking a lot about my church family. I have been a member of this particular family, the local one, for 18 years. That's a long time. They took us in when we were transplanted here far from family and very lonely. They nurtured and grew me up in wonderful ways that I am so thankful for. I have a very deep and abiding love for these people. And yet....

People are leaving our family in droves. Not to go home to meet their heavenly Father but just because they are angry or hurt or whatever. Often they don't even bother to say goodbye. You just look up one day and realize they are gone. One very dear and precious man talked to me for a good while one Sunday morning and the next he was gone to be with another family. In all the time we talked, he never once said goodbye, I'll miss you, this isn't your fault or anything of the sort. He just left. It hurt. It's a lot like being in a family where the divorcing never ends.

So this is what I've been thinking about family. Do we have the right to just yank our ties away from a church family because we are mad or they don't do everything the way we want it done? Do we do that with our blood families? And actually that's an misnomer because church is blood family of the strongest kind--Jesus' blood.

In the midst of my wondering and concerns, our small group met last week to discuss what our group would look like after the beginning of the year when we are to begin fresh. The conversation was honest and gut level to the point where I was trembling inside by the time we were finished. When honesty is that deep and that open, it always makes me tremble. This time it was from excitement and relief. There are two elders in my group and they gave us the freedom to say what we were concerned about for our limping congregation and what we thought about why it was happening. We all realized that we were thinking the same positive things and that the negative fears that were gnawing at us were not so frightening as they'd been once they came out in the open. It was an uplifting evening of laughter, some misty eyes, and a lot of love for each other and this church. It gave me courage and strength to keep praying and hoping and watching for God to move in this place. It also made me trust the men over us even more.

Family. Aren't we so lucky that God put us in family as babies to grow and be nurtured and raised to follow him and then in family again to continue to grow and be nurtured and raised to follow him the rest of the way home. Again I ask, do we have the right to just yank our ties away from a church family. I wonder if those that do this type of church jumping won't have to answer to God for their actions one day. In the meantime. I am so glad I am in this place at this time. No it is not an easy place to be but it is an exciting place to be. I can see us one day reaching out to those in need in our city and becoming the beacon on the hill to Indianapolis' poor and hungry. That is worth hanging around to be a part of. I am truly blessed.

posted by Dana @ 2:21 PM