Glenn and I have spent this week in beautiful South Lake Tahoe, California with hundreds of members of God’s family. We’ve been worshipping, studying, visiting, eating and laughing together. It’s been an encouraging week, so far. I’m teaching a ladies class every morning at eleven o’clock, but each day the ladies seem to teach me more than I am able to teach them. One of the ladies in my class has seven beautiful children and has experienced a dozen miscarriages, ten of which occurred in a three-and-a-half year period. Her praise to God for her sweet two-month-old was a lesson all in itself. Another sweet sister is ministering to her aged father with extreme devotion while she prays constantly that she can say or do something that will influence him to obey the gospel before it is too late. The desperation mingled with hope in her voice made me realize the amazing blessing those of us who have Christian parents often take for granted. One dear friend, along with her husband, has successfully raised three amazing Christian kids. Now that this couple is moving toward the empty nest phase of life, they are signing on to be foster parents so they can do their best to rescue other little souls from what would otherwise be an almost certain eternal hell. I’m reminded that evangelism happens in a variety of channels of love. One friend is running for mayor in his city. I love this Christian brother. He forfeited a week of precious campaigning time to be here with the people of God. When I asked if this would hurt his campaign, he responded, “Well, it’s in God’s hands. If He wants me to be mayor, He can make it happen without this week of campaigning. I’m going to seek first His kingdom.” It probably does not surprise you that this man, in his current office of city councilman, does not fail to vote for morality, even when it means he is in a minority of one. Many have asked for prayers as they struggle to win back children who have left the Lord or make it through a marital partner’s unfaithfulness or rebuild a family that has gotten off track, spiritually.
This is a part of God’s family that, for the most part, we’ve never met. Some of them we have seen in past years. Some of them have read from our materials or communicated with us through email. It occurs to us over and over, though, that we can go anywhere in the world and feel perfectly at home with God’s family. Give us five minutes in the room with people of God, even if the faces are brand new ones, and we are sharing deep sentiments, heavy burdens, reasons to rejoice and just loving one another as if we had some sort of bond from childhood.
We do. We are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. There is neither Jew nor Greek, bond nor free, male nor female. We are all one in Christ. We are heirs. We are joint heirs with our older brother Christ. We are family (Galatians 3).
