A man knows when he is growing old because he begins to look like his father. - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I was born into a family of babies. My mom and dad are both the babies of their families and so is my step-dad. My older brother is mentally and emotionally challenged causing him to slide from oldest, to middle, to baby, knocking my sister out of the baby role, to a degree. My step-brother is also the baby of our family. I am the only sibling of the four who was never allowed to enjoy the spoils of being the baby of the family. (Maybe spoils wasn't the perfect word there, but I like it.) My sister had two kids and I had three, so in three generations there are only 4 of us who are not babies (out of 12).
I explained that so you could understand how excited I was tonight when God explained to me that the babies in His family don't ever get to stay the baby of the family. God spent some time explaining how this family of ours/His works. He is the Father, the King, the Ruler. He gave us His Son who we can think of as a big brother. In a healthy family the father teaches the oldest child and in turn that child helps parent the younger children. He takes the lessons the Father has taught Him and is an example and a guide for the younger siblings, co-heirs. As we all grow and learn we are to be examples and teachers to the newest members. God used my own family to illustrate.
My dad was the baby in a family of eleven kids. The oldest boy was 18 when my dad was born. He had more parental figures than most people can imagine. I remember when one of his sisters passed away, he had an extremely difficult time with her death. At her funeral he said, "This is just like losing Ma all over again." As baby Christians we have lots of parental figures in our spiritual siblings. This is a huge blessing.
When I think back to all the stories I have heard my father tell over the years, one inparticular comes to mind. They had filled gunny sacks with cow manure and set them out in the road for cars to run over. I'm not sure how this worked or what the joy was, but my favorite part of the story was when they realized the car that hit the gunny sack was the sheriff. Dad said two older siblings grabbed each of his hands and they all ran to a shed at the back of their property. His feet never hit the ground. I believe he was maybe 5 or 6, but I could have this all wrong. The funny part of the story was when the sheriff walked in the shed and started chewing them out by name while wagging his finger in front of their noses. He started with the oldest and chewed right down to my little dad. He has some of the best stories about growing up with all those siblings. As children, they were baptizing the neighbor kids in the ditch. As they held Eugene under the water they told him to holler when he wanted up. Endless stories.
One thing God has explained to me in this family of ours is communication with Him. He wants us to know that He loves us. His two greatest commandments are to love Him and love each other. Isn't that what any parent wants? As our Father, He wants to have an intimate relationship with each one of us. I understand this, having three kids. They are all equally loved by me. I want to be as close to each of them as I can. This is what God wants with us. Each of my kids has weaknesses and strengths and so what I might expect from one, I wouldn't expect from another. This is how He feels. Even though He values us equally and loves to be with us, as we grow communication changes. He might start out with giving His child pictures, like He did and still does with me. He may not do this with everyone, for whatever reason. As we grow our communication changes. We talk with Him instead of to Him. He speaks to each of us differently according to who we are. As we grow we become less dependent on His constant instruction and instead decide for ourselves according to the values He has taught us. We may go to an older sibling who has a more intimate relationship with the Father and who has known Him longer. Yet, no matter which of His resources we use when making a life decision, when the Father speaks, we listen. Older siblings can teach us and guide us, but there is nothing like sitting in front of the Father, whether you have done something wrong, you have a hurt, or you are just spending time together.
There have been several holidays when our family has sat down together and we always take time in our prayer before our meal to pray for the members who are not there. No matter how many sit around the table there is an emptiness in each of our hearts for the siblings who have wandered away or chose not to join us for whatever reason. I feel this ache in my heart for those who haven't experienced the closeness I have been experiencing talking with my Father.
I remember when I was very young and I realized that my parents were also my sister's parents. The world did not revolve around me. Well, my world revolved around me, but my sister's world revolved around her. My mom was her mom and my dad was her dad. She didn't see the world through my eyes, she had her own. She was just as important to our father as I was. That was a hard day for me in my immature, self-centeredness. Now, in God's family, I think it's awesome. I remember one time when I raged at Dave with everything I had in me and afterwards I was talking to God when He told me I was wrong. He told me to apologize and I was not allowed to talk like that to Dave again. His exact words to me were, "Dave is mine." I will never forget it. My first thought was how lucky Dave was that God loved him that much. My second thought was that God was right, I was wrong. Third, I wanted that kind of relationship with God. My Father was teaching me how to love my brother, while my brother was teaching me how to love my Father.
It makes me sick to my stomach when my kids hurt each other. I can imagine how God feels when we hurt each other. I cannot imagine what it must be like for a Father to watch His child murder another of His children, lie to, abuse, abandon, and all the other ugly things we do to each other. My girls have both worked in the restaurant business. They are no longer called waitresses, but now are called servers. They have both complained to me about the Sunday afternoon shift. "The Church Crowd" or "the Grouchy Crowd" as they call it, are some of the rudest, most demanding, and smallest tippers of all the different crowds. I hurt for the unsaved server. Just today, my daughter was chewed out for using the handicap stall in the restroom by a woman with a cane. She didn't stop to think that the other stalls were full when my daughter got in there and in her rush to get back to serving others used the one available stall. She joked, "Mom, they are all so grouchy they are even following me into the bathroom to torment me." Servers should look forward to the "After Church Crowd" with excitement. A Sunday afternoon shift should be the best shift of the week.
In the days I grew up, I watched John Boy Walton get after his younger siblings and Ritchie Cunningham have a heart to heart with Joanie. Maybe they weren't real, but we all wanted them to be. Have we all given up? We may come from broken homes, we may have been abused, orphaned and/or abandoned, but in God's family we are equal royalty. I wonder if God ever thinks, "I didn't raise you to act like that." Compared to the rest of the world, we should act twice as good, because we weren't only reborn into this family, we were also adopted into it.
There is a strong chance that siblings who turn out well were hassled by the same parents. ~Robert Brault
Conspicuously absent from the Ten Commandments is any obligation of parent to child. We must suppose that God felt it unnecessary to command by law what He had ensured by love. ~Robert Brault
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