Fam-i-ly indeed

I have never had a brother or sister. Never had that sort of closeness that comes with a sibling in the household, for good or bad. I was an only child, adopted by my parents. I never knew my birth mother or father, nor will I ever know them. That came with baggage that I've lived with for more than six decades.

Twenty years ago when I went all in with Jesus, I became intimately aware of what family is. To me, life with Jesus means life with all those who have given their lives to him. To me, life with Jesus means life with the family of God -- which means you and I are brothers and/or sisters. That's who we are. Ironically enough, it is the shed blood of Jesus of Nazareth that makes non-blood relatives connected as if they were indeed blood relatives.

So it is with great joy that I accept what the scriptures tell me about the family tree. Hey, just the fact I have a family tree blows me away (for the good). Through Christ I have brothers, sisters, cousins, etc.

The Bible says:" In Christ’s family there can be no division into Jew and non-Jew, slave and free, male and female. Among us you are all equal. That is, we are all in a common relationship with Jesus Christ. Also, since you are Christ’s family, then you are Abraham’s famous “descendant,” heirs according to the covenant promises."

Man alive that smacks of greatness.

No division into Jew and Gentile; no slave and free -- which is a real division; no male versus female. 

The scriptures tell me without quibble or fuss that all of us are equal. 

Equal.

No difference. Not even big brother versus little sister.

No big and small, black and white or shades and hues in between. That's the Lord's way of saying, through the goodness of equality, that we dance the same dance, sing the same song, pray the same prayer, and most especially love the same loving manner. We are together. That's the best part of the worst part of us all. We can put down the fuss and pick up the things that connect us.

The best?

We are together. The best of who we are, of what we are, is connected by a thread we know best as the Holy Spirit. That simple fact means we can understand and relate not because we're such nice new models right off the assembly line. It means God created us, buffed us to a righteous shine, and sent us out of the plant -- equal but unique. Each and ever one of us.

Reminds me of a quick little story about family. A couple adopted their son, Eric, from Korea. When he was 5-years-old, they were having lunch at a restaurant, and Eric made conversation with a boy at the next table. At one point, the boy asked Eric, "why don't you look like your mom?" He answered "Cause she's a girl."

When my dad died in 1989, my immediate supervisor at The Clarion-Ledger in Jackson, Miss., Rick Cleveland, came to the funeral home in Meridian, Miss., to support Mary and I. My mother was standing at the open casket when Rick, who had never met her, tried to engage her in small talk. He said, "I'm so sorry for your loss." My mother, Delores, acknowledged with the niceness of the moment with a thin smile. Rick said, "Your husband and Billy look quite a bit alike." My mother's grin grew bigger as she said, "Billy is adopted." Nothing more. Nothing less.

Rick smiled as the silence thickened as wide as redwoods, and he slowly backed away because he had nothing left to say.

Though there was no real similarity in appearance, because of life experiences shared (and not some piece of paper), my dad and I were family. We were family, whether our blood and our DNA said so or not. 

Seems to me that in the long run, Jesus says we ARE family whether our blood says so or not. We are the family of Christ. 

We are God's children, period. Done. Finished.

That is true without question, and it is not dependent on what we do or even who we are. It is dependent on who we are in Christ. God's children. We are sons and daughters who are loved by our Heavenly Father in a reckless, wild, crazy love the likes of which we will never fully understand or have a comparison with on this planet. No matter what we do or where we go, God the Father is waiting for us to come home, waiting to love on his ragamuffin kids, waiting to lay a juicy smooch on our cheeks, waiting to hear how our day, week, month, lifetime went or is going.  And the great thing is He loves us equally. Long, long before Thomas Jefferson ever wrote a word about equality, God had already nailed it.

Friends, we are all equal, male and female, without the smidgen of prejudice that exists in all of us that tries to tell us we are better than so-and-so. 

No. Never true. Equals long for that home in which we all rest peacefully

We are fam-i-ly as the song goes. The fam-i-ly of God himself. Like Key-Lime pie, it gets no better than that.