Family

Family

Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor."1 Pet 2:17

One summer my husband was working at a sales job where he went into various offices in the area. One day, he made his sales pitch to a woman, and she asked his name. When he told her, she said, "that's my name, too! Who's your dad?" They talked for a while trying to place each other on the correct branch of the family tree. Then she told him that there was a family reunion in New Mexico a couple of weeks out. We were engaged at the time, and we talked it over with family. The two of us, my in-laws, and my brother-in-law drove to New Mexico together. We did  not know what to expect because this was a branch of the family we had never met. We were told, though that only a couple of McCabes had come over from Ireland, so if you were here, you belonged.  We were immediately made welcome, and quickly discovered similarities. There is "the nose", which appeared on most faces. (When I was telling this story to my children, they pointed to their faces and asked, "This one right here?) Most of the men had jobs that fell into one of three categories. The women were all crafty and had organized a craft sale over the weekend. There was also a cut-throat horseshoe tournament, which our family held their own in. Most everyone had sunflower seeds in their pocket, not just our men. The family church service on Sunday morning made it clear that beliefs were similar as well. We all enjoyed finding new family members and promised to keep in touch.

There is a tendency in the church today to be "clannish". It is easy to stick to the Sunday School, the church, or the denomination that we come from and to exclude others. We may do this from convenience and we may do it because of disagreements in doctrine or tradition such as sprinkling vs. immersion, instruments or no instruments, or blue song books vs. overheads. If we do separate ourselves we are depriving both ourselves and our extended Christian family. We truthfully have more similarities than differences. We all come together because of our love for God and our gratitude for what he has done for us. There is something that we can learn from every group of believers and there is something they can learn from us. In our part of the country we are seeing a greater unity in the body. In the past few months there have been gatherings of believers from every denomination, called One Kingdom, coming together to pray for the city and the nation. There have been Racial Unity Summits to help different cultures learn to understand each other and worship together. There was a wonderful rally, called Abilene for Israel, where Jewish and Gentile believers met to pray and worship together.  This really opened my eyes to our extended family in other countries. Aside from the fact that we are commanded to pray for Israel and to "pray for the peace of Jerusalem" we can learn so much from their reverence for God and their care for each other. Also, it helps us to understand the roots of our Christian faith.

John Chapter 1 tells us that to everyone who believed in Jesus God gave the right to become children of God.(John 1:12-13) Much of Romans 8 deals with the beautiful picture of God's adoption of us and the way we can call him Abba Father and have become joint heirs with Jesus. In 1 Peter 2:17, we read, "Show proper respect to everyone, love the family of believers, fear God, honor the emperor."
and 1 Thessalonians commend the believers there for their love of the family of God everywhere.

God has given us a gift in our human families, our church families and the extended family of believers. Have the courage to accept that gift and receive the blessings it can give us.

Guest spot

Welcome to the guest spot on Unseen. Thanks Darell.

Matt and the Butterflies

By Darell Martin

 

Matt got into our car after Wednesday night Bible class with an excited look on his face.  He explained that his eighth grade Bible class had taken a field trip to a park just outside of town.  He wanted us to go back out there now with him “to see,” he said, “a beautiful sight.”

 

Joanna and Jonathan had just gotten in the car. Mom, always wanting to encourage anything spiritual in her kids, looked at me and said, “Let’s go see what this is all about.”

 

We drove outside of town to the small park, stopped the car and the four of us followed Matt as he walked ahead excitedly, yelling back, “Hurry, before it gets dark.”

 

He took us to a bunch of trees and said, “What do you see?”

 

I said, “A whole bunch of trees.”

 

He laughed and said, “Watch this.”  He proceeded to shake the trees and we watched as thousands upon thousands of Monarch butterflies fluttered this way and that.  It was one of the most beautiful sights I had ever seen.  All of us began shaking trees with “Ohs and Ahs” until darkness forced us back to our car.

 

After that, Mom had placed a plant—Greg’s mist flower—in the back yard that attracts Monarchs to its nectar.  She even hung a butterfly house close by for them to rest on.

 

We found out that Monarchs actually migrate down several corridors to a certain spot in central Mexico, and the central part of Texas, where we live, is one of those corridors. They begin as an egg, laid by a female Monarch on the stem of a milkweed plant.  They hatch to become a pretty, multicolored caterpillar that spends its time around milkweed, eating to its heart content.

 

Then a change takes place.  The caterpillar climbs to a spot and attaches itself with a little silk, which it spins.  A shell forms around the caterpillar and soon becomes hard.  Within that transparent chrysalis a metamorphosis is taking place, changing this earth-bound worm into a beautiful butterfly that will journey thousands of miles from its home in the northern United States toward its final resting place on either the Oyamel fir trees of the Transvolcanic range of southern Mexico or the eucalyptus trees of Pacific Grove, California (Rosenblatt, 1998)

 

Now think of the tomb of Jesus.  It was really only a cocoon or chrysalis in which his earthbound body lay.  But that body, which had felt hunger, thirst, pain, tiredness, loneliness and sadness, had gone through its own metamorphosis.  It had transformed into an incorruptible body.  It was no longer earthbound; it was free of, not only Earth’s gravitational pull, but its fallen nature as well.

 

Jesus has been resurrected never to die again.  And one day, he, the pioneer of resurrection, will come back and shake the trees for the rest of us to fly away with him to the home he has prepared. 

 

All Choked Up

Welcome back to unseen. Lots of changes, good and bad over the last 2 or 3 weeks. Thanks to those of you who have prayed for my husband during this time. As usual, God has lessons for us during difficult times. Read on to see what I learned from mine.
All Choked Up

Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,² but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,and who meditates on his law day and night.³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither— whatever they do prospers. Psalm 1:1-3

We went visiting this weekend and in the Panhandle, it is a little cooler than it is here. We sat out on the back patio with the dog for a while and talked. My mother-in-law is having some health problems and I asked if there was anything I could do for her outside while it was cool. After some cleaning chores, she said that she really needed the grass out of the flower beds. With the dog supervising, I got down in the soft grass to work on the flower beds. It felt so good, with the cool, damp dirt on my hands. She showed me what she needed. There were long tendrils of grass filling most of the flower bed. It was using up the nutrients and the space that the flowers needed. In some places it was so thick that the sun couldn’t get to the flowers the way they needed. She reminded me to get the roots and identified which plants were desirable and which were weeds. After a while she asked if I was tired and wanted to stop, but by that time this story was churning in my head so I finished the task. The result was a cleaner, healthier flower bed and a story about what God can teach us through the natural world.

First and most obvious is the fact that just as the weeds were using up the energy and resources needed by the plants, there are things that choke out the word and the spirit in our lives. The ones that bother me most frequently are the evil threesome of resentment, guilt and worry. Like the grass, they are all three intertwined and mixed together, feeding off each other in a destructive cycle. Your weeds may be different, such as addictive behaviors and people, or toxic anger. Whatever they are, like my mother-in-law said, you need to get the roots. Positive thinking, will power and punishment/reward programs won’t work. It is a spiritual issue and one that needs to be dealt with. Finally not all the things that end up choking us are bad things. Guilt can be a motivator for change and anxiety a prompt for better planning. It is good to help other people and righteous anger has its place. The problem comes when things get out of balance and when we are not connected to the source of our life.

Passages about plants and nature are all through the scripture. The challenge this week is to narrow them down. The first that comes to mind is Psalms 1.
Blessed is the one who does not walk in step with the wicked
or stand in the way that sinners take or sit in the company of mockers,
² but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,and who meditates on his law day and night.
³ That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,which yields its fruit in season
and whose leaf does not wither—    whatever they do prospers
.Jesus teaches us about spiritual growth in the parable of the sower in Matthew 13, and specifically talks about the idea of things choking out the word.  In John 15:1-9 he encourages us to abide in him, the vine, so we as branches can bear much fruit. This is such a beautiful picture.