April 11, 2025 - Good Morning! It’s Friday, April 11.
My only sister and I live 350 miles apart. So we don’t get to visit as much as we’d like. During my visit with her this week, in San Antonio, we got to talking about our family growing up. We lived in an old, working class neighborhood in East Houston. And in that neighborhood there were about ten houses filled with family - our extended family. Within about a ten block radius lived our grandparents, our great grandparents, our uncles, our aunts, and too many cousins to count. Our family was a little community inside our community.
How different things are for most families today. I have no blood kin living anywhere close to me now, and my extended family extends across the country, around the world. I often miss the support, the safety, the fellowship of family that I had growing up. That family safety net was typical in Bible times. Travel was difficult and dangerous in the ancient world. Jesus never travelled more than a hundred miles from His home. The people of the Word depended on their families for support, for safety, for fellowship.
But Jesus had another family, too - a family of twelve friends, twelve apostles. He walked and worked and lived with them for three long, challenging, miraculous years. And, in a real sense, they became as much of a family to Him as Mary and Joseph and the rest of His blood kin. Maybe your parents and grand parents and children and uncles and aunts and cousins still live close to you. If so, then count yourself blessed. But, even if they do - and especially if they don’t - I hope that you are also blessed with a family of friends.
Meet you back here on Monday, when we’ll begin a week-long series, “The Road to Resurrection”.
David
cindertex50@yahoo.com
