Leftover Love for My Family

LEFTOVER LOVE

Why does my family receive the leftovers of my love and attention?  Why am I so tempted to devote more of my love, respect, and attention to those outside my house?  These are questions that my family has been asking for a while.

First, the question applies to not only my teen-age kids, but to myself.  One of my first questions when dealing with problems in my kids is the question, "Where did that come from?"  I have to do some careful self-examination avoiding the pitfalls of self-pity and self-justification.  Am I teaching my children that our life as a family is secondary to my work, my friends, or my church positions?  Self-pity says, "I am a rotten father.  I'll never get this right."  Self-justification says, "I'm doing my best.  What more can be expected?"  Both avoid the questions, "What can be done?  What would the Lord have of me?"

As I examine my tendencies to spend time away from home, to hurry my family from on event to another, or to make my family picture-perfect, I find that my attention and my desire is focused on pleasing and impressing people outside my family and home.  Why?  I believe that home and family is only one step away from our own hearts.  My marriage and my kids reflect what sort of person I am far more than my job, my friends, and my church positions.  As with my own heart and private world, I find myself more concerned with my family looking good rather than being good.  As long as everyone else thinks my family is okay, we're okay.  Never mind that we can barely stand being around each other.

If I settle for appearances over reality, that's not good.  If I mistake appearances for reality, that's dangerous and destructive.  The reason real changes in my family are so difficult and time-consuming comes from several factors:

• I do not want to change myself, really.
• I do not know how to change myself.
• I really don't want my family to change much, just in a few ways that will make life easier for myself.
• I do not know how to go about changing my family.

Change and growth seem elusive at best.  Most of the time I want to be struck by lightning or bit by a radioactive spider for change instead of doing any training or effort.  I might wish my family was different, like I wish I was a concert pianist, but wishing only breeds trying and trying is merely an effort expected to fail.  Two things are needed to break out of this situation: encouragement and endurance.

CHANGE BEGINS WITH TRUE HOPE

Hope needs to be set on what is true, otherwise it yields disappointment or even despair.  Jesus was big on truth.  He was always saying, "I tell you the truth" because he knew we needed truth to live by, truth to hope in.  The truth about family is that it is a reflection of the Trinity.  Jesus final word on God is that he  is his Father and our Father.  God's will and desire is bent on redeeming family relationships because, at their best, they give a dim picture of the oneness found in the Trinity.  If I work on my family life, I am deeply involved in the work of God, shining out his image.

Jesus's commands also reflect this.  Part of the greatest commandment is to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Who is our neighbor?  Simply, one who is "nigh" or near.  It may be that one of the big problems of the priest and Levite in the parable of the Good Samaritan was that they were overly concerned with people who were not "nigh" to them.  They were is a hurry to get "there" rather than love the person who was near at them moment. Sometimes that person is a stranger we may not like very much.  More often the ones who are near to me are my wife and kids.

All this talk about Jesus's commands often breeds guilt in my heart because I am used to seeing them used as clubs to beat people rather than hope to lift people. I am as guilty as anyone else. On the contrary, "everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope." (Romans 15:4) It is not Jesus who overburdens us with commands that we cannot keep, but ourselves. Loving family is not something I must or should do, but something that I get to do by God's grace. Jesus's commands are always pictures of what I can be like as I walk alongside him bearing the easy yoke.

So this is the encouragement. I am confident that God wants my family to be a center of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. This is his will. He never intended that such a life would be done without him. Jesus does not command what he will not have done by God's grace. His commands provide the picture of a life immersed in the Holy Spirit, a life drawing upon God's kingdom resources, a life dead to dead-end desires. Love is the best word to describe such a life. Family is where such love resides most of the time.

Endurance comes from knowing that when I pick up the burdens in my life, God will be at the other end, doing most of the lifting. Endurance comes from knowing that God will not lift what I I do not lift. My main work of lifting is the work of trusting. My effort begins as I trust God to work in my life. As I understand God's desire to make my family a place where love, joy, and peace reign, I can align my work with his. He takes my small efforts and gives them powerful results I could not have anticipated.

FAMILY MEANS TOGETHER

So what does that all mean? For my family, we do a lot of things together. As a result we do less things in general, since we feel we need and want to do many of them together. One of the most important things we do together is devote ourselves to God. Without such time with him, we cannot go on very long. Such devotion is made up of Bible/devotional readings, sharing work and conversation, eating normal and special meals together, and praying for each other and with each other. God continually meets us as we expectantly come to meet him.

Where are you to begin? Begin where you are. Make that one corner, room, house, office as like Heaven as you can. Begin? Begin with the paper on the walls, make that beautiful; with the air, keep it fresh; with the very drains, make them sweet; with the furniture, see that it be honest. Abolish whatsoever worketh abomination--in food, in drink, in luxury, in books, in art; whatsoever maketh a lie--in conversation, in social intercourse, in correspondence, in domestic life. This done, you have arranged for a Heaven, but you have not got it. Heaven lies within, in kindness, in humbleness, in unselfishness, in faith, in love, in service. To get these in, get Christ in. Teach all in the house about Christ--what He did, and what He said, and how He lived, and how He died, and how He dwells in them, and how He makes all one. Teach it not as a doctrine, but as a discovery, as your own discovery. Live your own discovery. (The City Without a Church, Henry Drummond)

Such a life will transcend the walls of our homes and the intimacy of our families. As we find ourselves trustworthy and able to work with what is small and close, we will find ourselves asked to work more with what is more distant and "big," but, I suspect, never to the exclusion of what is close and small. From the Bible as well as my own life I know that what is "big" and "important" to people in general is never big and important to God. The biggest changes start in the smallest corners and with unlikely people at the heart of them.

Lord, you know my heart. You know how I long to impress other people and how I think that by impressing others I will find the approval I seek. It is not true. Teach me how godliness with contentment is a great gain for myself and my family. Let me know the truth in the words, "Follow me, and I will make you a fisher of people." Just like you, Jesus. Amen.