Our devotion is by ALAN MAKER, one of our retired but still very active ministers.
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For I will pour water on the thirsty land,
and streams on the dry ground;
I will pour out my Spirit on your offspring,
and my blessing on your descendants.
4 They will spring up like grass in a meadow,
like poplar trees by flowing streams. Isaiah44:3-5
The symbol of the old South Africa was "separateness". When we became a democracy we had to find new ones -- a new flag and a new national anthem. Desmond Tutu came up with the symbol "a rainbow nation". That can be interpreted as a family of many different colours, opinions, histories, and culture. The "family" is an excellent symbol for our new dispensation.
Some years ago the Presbyterian Church embarked on a two year evangelism programme for which the chosen symbol was "the family". The critics had a field day. The denomination was accused of returning to an exclusivism, separateness.
A true family, however, is open and not closed. We have three daughters. One of the delights over the years has been the people they have brought into our home. Long after they had all left to celebrate their independence, one of our daughters was coming from England to visit us. I bumped into an old friend of hers, told her the news, and her immediate response was, "Please wont you make a potjie as you used to do?" She remembered a warm, welcoming home.
We are families at every level -- our closest kin, a church family, a family of rainbow dimension in our country, and a family of nations in the United Nations.
Families are not perfect. In his book "Reaching Out" Henri Nouwen discusses the movements of the spiritual life. In one section he deals with families in which he makes the point that within families we need to move from hostility to hospitality. We can all testify to hostility within our own families. That is inevitable. The challenge is not to allow the hostility to separate us but to work towards reconciliation. The only reason the prodigal son came home was he knew he could.
God, the Creator, wants us to work for reconciliation, peace, and harmony in all the families to which we belong. St. Paul told us that Jesus broke down the dividing walls of hostility between traditional enemies. We can be sure that any and every effort towards harmony will receive God's blessing.
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
