Weekly Tea

(continued from last post)

The following is a suggestion for a blueprint to rebuilding your “Family and the family alter”.

a.What is a family? It is not a regimented unit of biological relatives held together by a force, pressure, or intimidation. It is not a subjugated group of personalties who have to make every decision and desire revolve around one dominate person. It is not a disconnected mess of unrelated ambitions and uncorrelated schedules.

The family is a harmonious co-existence of biological or socially related human beings living together in mutual respect and consideration of each others needs and aims. Each individual member has their individual responsibilities that must be fulfilled for a family to make a home, such as cleaning, cooking, working in the yard, etc. By these being done it also prepares the whole family to work for God in the world as well as in the church. Christian families are meant to be, by God, the seedbed of our society. People do not begin in churches, schools, or at their occupations, they begin in homes and then go on to church, school and the work force. We do in the world what we have learned or began to learn to do at home. The Christian in public did not develop his or her decorum in public, but in the home. While operating a childcare facility, we found that the moral (frontal lobe) of the brain is not fully developed until around the age of twenty-five. Our society, even Christians, take our children out of homes and local churches and send them to college or university where, by virtue, are given the responsibility to tune the compass of their life and too many times by atheistic, non-Christians with warped morals. If we would realize that every personality and idea finds its origin in family relationships, then we would make it our priority to develop a true Christian home. If the families of our nation is the seedbed of our society, then the Christian family is the pattern of the spiritual kingdom of God. The scenes of concern and affection within the Christian family are the same scenes found throughout the family of God.

Lets look at a few: fellow Christians are referred to as brother or sister, God is seen as the principle authority figure and referred to as Father, often our invitation to the unsaved or backslidden is “come home, ye who are weary come home.”

The Christian family will make royalty out of routines and blessings out of burdens. Every task no matter how menial it may seem is seen as an opportunity to train for service. So the tasks of life are, no matter how small, opportunities for service to Christ. One Christian mother taped a small note over the sink that read, “Divine service held here three times a day.”

(to be continued)