One ...Family

Who doesn’t like to have a place where they belong? Who doesn’t want to be recognized, noticed and appreciated? I know I sure do and I am quite confident that you want that as well. I am amazed how powerful the emotional memories are when I was recognized or singled out in a bad way. Can you relate to this at all?

• I was in Mrs Colt’s 1st grade class and I raised my hand and called her "MOM." I was laughed at and reminded of this slip of the tongue all week but it felt like a lifetime.
• A couple weeks later I accidentally walked into the girl’s bathroom. That mocking lasted two lifetimes.

Today these are a bit humorous in their insignificance but they are also powerful reminders to me of just how fragile we are. I can still intensely feel the anxiety and the loneliness that came with those mistakes. It is also made obvious how important it is to not be “outside” or identified as not "normal." We want to fit in. We want to matter. We want to have a good place to call our own.

God made us to have our lives overlap with each other. The problem is that in our sinfulness instead of overlapping for strength, meaning and connecting, we bump into each other to conquer and to use up. Instead of appreciating different gifts, talents, personality types and diverse cultures, we look for ways to tear down or make inferior.

In our text for this Sunday [Ephesians 2.11-22] God reveals to us that He wants us to see the extraordinary depth of the oneness that comes through Jesus. We are united through our citizenship in God’s Kingdom and we are built together into a living temple. This is for all of us – no matter our ethnic make-up, our education or anything else - God means all of us that are followers of Jesus. This call for appreciating and working together is culminated, at least in my mind, when God drives home the fact that we are a single family. We are all brothers and sisters. There is a right way for family to treat each other and there is a reason for great celebration since we have a place and an identity that no one can take from us – even if we walk in the wrong bathroom!

One of the great themes that runs through all the pages of Scripture is that God wants YOU! He wants to set you free from fears, inadequacies, pride and anything else that would separate you from God and His family. Jesus comes to our world to heal us from sinfulness and set us on a path that is filled with joy and at the same time is of great significance. He makes us ONE!

• 19 Consequently, you are no longer foreigners and strangers, but fellow citizens with God’s people and also members of his household, 20 built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the chief cornerstone. 21 In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord. 22 And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit.                                                                                                                                       (Ephesians 2)

Your Brother in Christ,
Pastor Nick