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| "Blended Family" by Ruth Robbins |
And looking about at those who were sitting in a circle around Him,
He said, "Here are My mother and My brothers!
Whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother."
Mark 3:33-35 (HCSB)
It has been heard around our house, especially in the early days, weeks and even months of a foster placement the term REAL used to clarify who is actually family. For all intense and purposes foster parents and their kids are strangers. Yes, we have trained and prepared. Yes, we have waited. Yes, we have prayed, but all of that is transparent to a child. The idea of real to a child can also mean lasting. A foster home is temporary. Real also carries with it the weight of being blood related. To both children and adults alike these definitions of real family run very deep in the conscience of how we think, act and relate to others.
Jesus takes this notion of real family and blows it up in Mark 3! How stunned the crowd must have been in a society where your name and family were everything. Think of his mother! She had to have been crushed. Some of his brothers may have been relieved to have Jesus, this quickly becoming black sheep of the family writing them off. Stop here though. Was he really writing them off, rejecting them as family or was he simply expanding the parameters? He takes lots of our ideas and notions of how the world and life should work and turns them on their ears.
Jesus takes this notion of real family and blows it up in Mark 3! How stunned the crowd must have been in a society where your name and family were everything. Think of his mother! She had to have been crushed. Some of his brothers may have been relieved to have Jesus, this quickly becoming black sheep of the family writing them off. Stop here though. Was he really writing them off, rejecting them as family or was he simply expanding the parameters? He takes lots of our ideas and notions of how the world and life should work and turns them on their ears.
"Look at how great a love the Father has given us
that we should be called God's children. And we are!"
1John 3:1a
It didn't take a court ruling or a marriage certificate to make us His, it was blood, His blood that made that bond. It is a rich and REAL bond that all believers share. We too live in an IF World and just as my foster sons struggle with the unknown and you and I wrestle with what is yet to be or could have been, we press forward with our feet firmly planted in a family that cannot be torn apart. Rest in that peace today dear friend!
With love,
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