Safety in Family
The other weekend I attended my little cousin’s graduation party. She is officially 18 and is planning for the future: community college to become a pharmacist. I’m so proud of her! While I was there I felt something that is hard to put to words, but I saw God doing something precious through my time there. The next day I ran into an old friend at Cub Foods and she began talking about the very thing that I had been pondering, so I will take that as God’s hand doing something special that I’m going to try to articulate to you.
There is something peaceful and safe about being with family. As I was at the graduation party, surrounded by family, I had this beautiful sense that these people have known me my entire life. They knew me when I was young, and as I grew. They’ve known many sides of Sora, and they’ve always wanted what’s best for me. Which means a lot.
What exactly does it mean, you may wonder? Why did I feel safe there, a feeling that I, honestly, don’t always feel. It was because I didn’t have to be somebody. I didn’t have to put on a charade, I didn’t have to wonder how people were receiving me. I didn’t have to fight the battles that I normally fight to just exist. I could just be. And it was safe.
I have experienced that feeling many times in the last several years, a feeling that I find when I’m surrounded by family, family that have known me since I was young. They don’t know me post-trauma. They don’t see me as I often see myself. As broken, or “wrong”. They don’t wonder about whether I’m “good” or not, because they know the truth. They know who I am, or at least it feels as much. There is a beautiful intimacy in family, that despite all of its brokenness, you can trust that they have your best interest in heart. That they have known you, and even delighted in you, since you were young.
And I realized after this event that that is how we are with God. That is the very reason he created family, and thus, why he calls himself a Father. Because he is the ultimate dad. The ultimate patriarch. The ultimate safe place—place where you can go when the world is scary or hard. That is also why he tells us that “religion that is pure and undefiled before him is this: to take care of widows and orphans and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27). Because he is a dad, and widows and orphans are people that don’t have family. THAT is how much God loves family and how much he is a good father.
That’s is also why he tells us to not neglect gathering with fellow believers, because that is HIS family. And we can’t get God without getting his family. Heck—he even calls his family his own body. That is pretty far out. Family means so much to him. So much that when Jesus hung on the cross he even looked to his own mother and said “”Mother, this is your son.” And to John he said, “this is your mother.”” (John 19:26). He was leaving, and he knew his mother needed family, not only that but he was in the process of creating the world’s biggest family. Sure, full of issues, but family, nonetheless.
God created us for family. And his family is the body of Christ. I am lucky enough to have my own blood family that believes in Jesus, and so in that I see an incredible spiritual heritage, but we aren’t to neglect the family of God. And we should see safety in the family of God as well. Even if they haven’t seen us since we were little. They have the same father who HAS known us all of our lives. And he WILL fight for us. I often don’t feel safe when I’m at church, but this was a great reminder for me that I have a dad in heaven who knows me, and who fights for me.
I pray you would feel him fighting for you too.
