Family Away From Family
Posted by C. Holland on Mar 23, 2009One of the really cool things about the Christian family of God is that we can find what I call “family away from family” in our mission field. I recently was asked to address a church group bridge event on Christian unity, and one of my points was that, even though we are so very far away from our blood relatives, God has thankfully surrounded us with what can best be termed “surrogates”.
We weren’t looking for it, or even expecting it, but the groups we’re around have provided us with similar support we’d have from uncles, aunts, siblings and even parents, could they be here in body. All of our grandparents have passed on, but we’ve had such devoted attention from the older set in our church that it’s as if they’ve picked up the care where our grandparents had to leave off. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not viewing these relationships as replacements for our actual relatives, but it is nice to have people here check on us as if we were their genetic family.
We even experienced this similar situation on one of our exploratory trips to Western Europe. We found ourselves in a Bible study that represented people from Brazil, France, Australia, England, Africa, Northern Ireland—and we represented America. Though our English was accented very differently, the only other thing that we had in common was our faith and following of Jesus. We understood certain Christian concepts, and we could all acknowledge the difficulty in being the outsider, both as immigrants and as Evangelicals in very secular societies.
Praise God for His care and faithfulness through His children!
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I jest. Good one!