A Forever Family - 4th April 2008

“Everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life”
John 6:40.

I have just finished a book called “Someone to Watch over me”. It was one of those that you can’t put down. It’s not often I get gripped but I was desperate to know there was a happy outcome. It featured a girl who was brought up in various care homes and foster families as a result of her home situation and the lack of love and the inappropriate care she experienced there. She spent most of her childhood not knowing where she belonged, or knowing true care and the love of a family. She longed for a “forever family” and her social workers knew that she needed love and permanence. Even in adulthood, she went on to have several failed marriages and broken relationships with her own children.

Without the confidence that relationships last, it can be difficult for us to invest time and emotions into them. We hold back for fear of rejection. But holding ourselves back means that those relationships can never become close or intimate, or be truly satisfying as God intends. In order to be emotionally healthy we all need foundations of love and permanence laid into our lives.

If you haven’t had the blessing of a loving and stable family background then no doubt it has given you additional hurdles to overcome in life, although God may well have graciously placed other people into your life to help provide the things you missed.

What is important is the realisation that even the best family environment can only point towards our ultimate satisfaction. Even the most loving upbringing can only reflect a fraction of Gods love for us. And even the most faithful and committed people cannot promise to be there forever. Yet they can model for us something of Gods care, and his love beyond measure and for all time to eternity.

Father, let me live today in the knowledge that I will be in your care and your loving embrace forever. Amen.