by John Fischer
God is a family. (This devotional is going to give my grammar check fits!) God is spoken of in three persons in the scriptures: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It’s enough to make a family of Himself. (See what I mean?) It’s hard for us to grasp this part of the nature of God, but we do know from scripture that these three parts exist and that they communicate with each other. The creation account presents God as having said, “Let us make human beings in our image, to be like ourselves” (Genesis 1:26). God was conversing with Himself over our creation. (Talk about “talking to yourself…!” God talks to Himself all the time and He isn’t even senile!) That would make Him a family even before He created us.
And it’s a tight family too. For instance, when Jesus was on earth, He was always saying that He didn’t do anything on His own volition, but only what the Father told Him to do (John 5:19-23). He always gave credit to His Father and was in constant communication with Him. And then when Jesus left, He left us with His Holy Spirit whom He said was His perfect stand-in, because, as Jesus represented the Father to us, so the Holy Spirit would represent Jesus to us (John 16:12-15).
The importance of all this to us is that it shows how fundamental the concept of family is to our basic nature. Part of our being in the image of God is our need to be in, and experience a family. We need each other to be complete. Just as you can’t understand God without taking into account His three persons, so you can’t understand humanity without taking every human being into account. He made us in His image, and just as He is multi-personified, so His image in us includes all of those He has made and those yet to be born. Leave anyone out and you leave out part of the image.
Think about that. Everyone you see today is a part of your family. There is no “us” and “them.” We all reflect something of God’s image whether we believe in Him or not. Family is basic to the way we were created. We’re fundamentally family.
If we thought this way, there would me no racial tension. If we thought this way there would be no hate. If we thought this way there would be no genocide, no oppression, no exploitation, no slavery. There would be just family.
We might not get the whole world to think like this overnight, but we can start something, and maybe make some ripples in the tide of humanity that reflect the God who made us all. Music: Enya - Once You Had Gold |
