First Family!

How important is family? So important that God had one before he had us.

“Then God said, ‘Let us make people in our image, to be like ourselves.’” (Genesis 1:26) Ever wonder who God is talking to here?If you could hear me talking to myself sometimes, you would hear me use the plural, as in: “Let’s do this or let’s do that.”That’s not what’s happening here, however. God is speaking of the parts of himself that make up the whole of who he is.This is God as three in one – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Together, they make up one God; separately they form three personas operating as one.

So when God made us like himself, he didn’t make just one of us, he made many that we might learn to relate to one another the way God relates to himself. That we might become one as he is one.This is the ultimate non-dysfunctional family – what we will realize in heaven, but get a glimpse of here on earth.

Christ’s goal for us is that we would be one with God and one with each other – multiple personalities operating and relating as one being.This is why being part of an extended family is a part of discovering who we are and why we are here.

So don’t ever sell this one short.Family is not something we have to put up with for a while; it is an integral part of our identity.This flies in the face of one of Western culture’s most enduring myths – the myth of the supreme individualist. It’s an image idealized in our movies, especially the westerns of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood and the spy adventures of James Bond.

God was a family before he made us, so this must be pretty important. Family has always been an important part of who we are.It’s imbedded in our very nature.No one can exist alone unto himself – even God.We were made to interrelate.We not only need each other, we were made for each other.This is an important part of our purpose for being.

So forget trying to go at it alone. No one’s that tough, except for maybe Clint Eastwood, but that’s only in the movies.....John Fischer