a surrender - 38

(Continuing "a surrender," chapter five, "who are my mother and my brothers?")

I had thought a lot about family over the past year. I had had a good family experience while I was growing up. And this community offered a good experience of family also, a family that was a chosen one, based on a person’s own beliefs and convictions. Both of those seemed good to me. But I had also experienced something more unusual, an experience of family that had surprised me, because it was among people I had not chosen and had not been born to. People that I had never met, yet who had welcomed me into their homes and had treated me like a brother. People who seemed to know my needs before I asked. People I recognized as family by their spirit and their actions. It made me think of Jesus’ words, when he heard that his mother and brothers were looking for him. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he replied. And gesturing at the people gathered around him, listening to him, Jesus said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.”  

This family that Jesus was talking about seemed to be God’s family. All those who did what God wanted were included in God’s family. It wasn’t their birth that determined it, or becoming part of some organization, or their common interests or convictions. It was God who determined it. Only God could decide who was in and who wasn’t. And the purpose and the nature of this family was determined only by God. “Whoever does the will of God is my brother and my sister and my mother.” Only those who are doing what God wants are God’s family. And everywhere that people are doing what God wants, God’s family is there, which is what I had experienced again and again. 

I remember one of the older members of the community once describing the “life cycle” of human communities. He said a community is like a living thing. It is born, then grows bigger and stronger, then eventually it weakens and dies. I thought about that. It reminded me of my thoughts about organizations, that they all eventually collapse and disappear. But when I thought about the family that Jesus described, it seemed different. It was God’s family. It existed because of God. Its life depended on God, not people. So did it die, like every human organization or community? I didn’t think so. 

These differences of the family that Jesus talked about inspired me and stirred hope in me. Maybe there was a family that would never end, that would always be there for me. A family that I could always depend on, no matter where I was. A family that was open to all. A family led only and always by God. If this could be true, I didn’t think I could be satisfied with anything less.

Continued...