Family Time

You may have noticed that I didn’t post a sermon last Sunday.  I posted the sermon from the Wednesday service, but not Sunday.  The reason for that is that I didn’t give a sermon last Sunday.  I was out of town.

The reason I was out of town is that Wanda’s family was having a family reunion in Mitchell Saturday.  As long as we were going that far, we went to Armour Friday to visit my parents.  Then, after the reunion, we went back to Armour Sunday because both of my brothers, one from Virginia and one from Nebraska, were visiting.  We got home Sunday night.

I never like to miss a Sunday.  Still, family things are important.  Our family impacts us in a way that no one else ever does.  We hope that impact will be a good one, and of course it often is.  But whether it’s good or bad, our family still impacts us in a special and unique way.

Did you ever wonder why God created us to live in families?  It’s one of those things we take for granted.  But lots of animals don’t live in families.  Humans universally do.  Go to any country you can think of, and the humans living there will be living in families.  Why is that?

Well, I can’t read God’s mind.  But I think one of the reasons is that God knows how hard life can be for us.  Because life can be hard, God does not want us to go through it alone.  So, God created us to live in families, so we’d always have someone to be there for us and to help us.  And when I say “families”, I’m not necessarily talking about a spouse and children.  Family includes that, of course, but family can include uncles and aunts, nieces and nephews, and cousins of all sorts.  “Family” can sometimes even include close friends.

Whatever “family” means to us, it’s something important.  And we need to take time to do things with them.  We need to do that even if it means we have to miss out on something else that’s important to us, like being here to lead worship on Sunday morning.

But nothing, not even family, is more important than God.  Our obligation to follow God is more important than anything else.  It’s hard for me to imagine a situation where my duty to family and my obligation to follow God were in conflict.  But if that situation ever arises, I hope I would choose to follow God.  I hope you would, too.

Family is important to us.  But nothing, not even family, should ever be more important to us than our love for God and our obligation to follow God.