I’d like to follow up on the excellent Mother’s Day message that my wife Kathy shared last Sunday. It’s true that when people visit our church for the first time, they usually make the comment, “This is like a big family.” Most of them mean that in a sincere and positive way (I think). The truth is that it is so. The first thing you notice about our church is that it is a big family. The second thing you notice is that families all have their quirks, their shortcomings, their strengths and their challenges. In case you didn’t grow up in a family, they are not perfect and they are wrought with disagreements. Not every day is a day of perfect harmony, but every day has the potential of bringing growth, hope, and deepened relationships.
Think about the way your own families operate. The children bicker over nothing, and sometimes so do mom and dad. There are always those family obligations that you love to attend and the ones that you wish did not exist. You know that Aunt Ruth is going to be loud and obnoxious and you know that Cousin Bob is going to come in late and leave early. Uncle Fred will reveal his red neck; and so it goes. We can isolate from our family or we can face it head on.
The other side of family is that you also have that one special aunt that you can’t wait to see and to hear how her life is going. There’s that cousin you had as a best friend growing up and you can’t wait to reminisce, again, over those good old days. You have that uncle who’s really funny and always has a great joke or a snappy come back.
Families are the best thing ever. Families are the most challenging thing ever. We have to decide if family is worth it. Our great nation debates even at the national level about things that affect the family value system of the average Joe. They debate over things that have the ability to reinforce and strengthen that value system. Why? Because it is at the very foundation of what any healthy society needs in order to remain balanced and therefore strong.
Is family always the easiest thing to deal with? No. But it does teach us how to relate to people and situations, if we’ll allow ourselves to be trained by it. Is it always going to go our way? No. Is family ever going to disappoint us? Yes. Will there be disagreements? Yes, but disagreements aren’t bad. They are just disagreements. We can choose to do something bad, or unproductive, with the disagreement, or we can choose to use it to better know and understand each other. If we let the disagreement prevail, then all we’ll ever have are relationships that can never be stronger than disagreements. If, however, we decide to use them to grow and help us better understand others, then the disagreement can be just what we need in order to have deeper and deeper understanding and relationship.
We at CCF are indeed a big family. We are blessed and our message to the world is this, “It’s worth it!”
Blessings!

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