Family is a wonderful blessing! (Archie Bunker may not agree with me on this, but it is the honest truth!) Spending time with all of them around the holidays was truly a special event. However, when you talk about family, especially if you are referring to overall size, my family is dwarfed by my wife’s family. In other words, my family is very small, while hers is very big.
When one has such a large family, you start a tradition of having yearly family reunions. I’ll never forget the first time that I attended my wife’s family reunion. I was quite amazed at the turnout of family members in attendance. So many, that I couldn’t even keep them straight. It even got to the point that the family couldn’t even remember who was who, especially if they hadn’t seen them in quite some time. So the addition of name tags came into play. Everyone began wearing name tags to remind everyone of their relationship with each other.
After reflecting on today’s first reading from John, maybe all of us should wear name tags that say, “Child of God.” After all, this is the essence of our identity. It would remind us of our relationship with God AND with each other – that we are all part of the same family. And despite all of our differences (color, gender, religion, etc.), we are all related…we are all in the family!
Try this sometime: walk down the street, or your office building, or the even the mall and look at others and say to yourself, “That’s my brother!” Or, “That’s my sister!” Or for a real challenge, when you are driving and you come in contact with a really poor driver, say to yourself, “That’s a Child of God!” This will truly change your perspective about others.
The greatest sign of God’s love is the gift of His Son that has made us true children of God. This relationship is a present reality and also part of our lives to come. True knowledge of God will ultimately be gained, but we need to prepare ourselves NOW by imitating his Son. That is our challenge.
We are all in the same family. So don’t be a meathead. Let’s mingle with all of our brothers and sisters and love one another as God loves all His children!!!
