This week on Things Unseen, I thought it would be good for us to reflect a little on family life.

I think we all agree that's important, although we certainly don't all have the same experience of family.

Some of us have had good experiences, some bad, many mixed,

and some of us perhaps have little or no real experience of family life.

So I think it's important that we all begin in the same place,

with the family to which every believer belongs, what one of my former colleagues used

to call the worldwide, eternity-long family of God.

Because that's the family that every believer has been brought into, and that's the family

that lasts. We sometimes say about family relationships that blood's thicker than water.

And that's also wonderfully true, theologically, isn't it?

We've been brought into the family that Christ is created by the shedding of his blood,

and that blood is thicker than water.

That's why sometimes Christians feel they're even closer to members of

the family of God than they are to some of the members of their natural family.

But there's another wonderful thing to remember here. In the family of God, none of us

is a natural member. We've all been adopted. None of us is in a position of demeaning any

of our brothers and sisters by saying, well, I really belong to this family, but you're just

an adopted member. I remember hearing about an adopted boy who was mistreated by his friends

at school. And other children would say to him, you're only adopted. And he developed

a great reply. He said, my parents chose me. Your parents just to get whatever came. So the first thing

to say about families and family life is that we need to get our priorities right. There's a lifelong family and there's an

eternity long family. Most of us belong to a lifelong family with its privileges and obligations.

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