Family is Forever

“A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it”

(George Moore)

We choose friends based on similarities – we have similar tastes and we like similar things – but we don’t have a luxury of choosing our families. We go for interviews to get a job at work, but we can’t go for interview to be a mother or father or brother or sister to fill the family unit. Friends is a choice, family is what we’re given. And just as we must make the most out of all other things God gives us – our time, physical body, personality, thinking, feeling, experience, our soul – we must make the most out of the family we’ve received.

Before there were pastors, small groups, counsellors, therapists, doctors, there were moms, dads, brothers, sisters, and grandparents. Our family is the only connection we have to our heritage. Honestly, we can end up a friendship or a partnership and replace it with a new one, but we can’t replace our family. (Most of) our family members knows us like no one else does. My mother know my personality, my brother learned that I love movies, and my late father know I loves to read. More than that, they know most of my true personality, my inner identity and authentic behaviour at home. Our family are part of our life’s story. They raised us and they grow together with us. That relationship – family – will never ends. Family is forever.

For all sorts of reasons – both valid and not – people sometimes choose to end relationships. I know this is true especially among young people. I work in student ministry now and I walk together with student-friends for almost 4 years since. I listened to their struggles in relationship (and not to forget my own experiences). You! I’m sure you’ve had family members do or say offensive things to you, and if a friend or colleague or employee or boy/girlfriend acted the way the family member did, you most probably would ended the relationship. But because it was family, you instead invested more – more love, more forgiveness, more patient, more understanding. Because it was family, and because Christ is in you, you choose to let it go, Christ then empowered you, heal the hurt, and move forward.

I thank my Lord Jesus Christ whenever he strengthen me and my family to choose to let things go and move forward on many occasions with one another. Many times I fought, rebelled and talked offensively to my mother and exchanged hurting words and face expressions with my brother, but it doesn’t take a long time for us to get together, eat dinner and chat again. Family conflicts is never beyond repair. As long as there is family, there is love and grace. Family is forever. My God value family more than anything else. After all, God the Father love the Son, and the Son loves us his children and abide in them in the Holy Spirit and God forever want to be with us in his home. Like Father, like Son; like God, we value family and relationship above all. Family is forever.

THINK BIG. START SMALL. GO DEEP.