Getting Adopted

With my wife's Grandma nearing the end of her life, my Dad's birthday, and my sister's High School graduation approaching, its safe to say that family has been on my mind a lot lately.  Its a weird concept to think about if you take a few minutes and analyze the situation.  You are born and if you are lucky you are raised by both parents.  You are literally a mini version of them, for better or worse. They raise you, teach you how to walk, eat, talk, behave, throw a mean curve ball, etc. And then maybe they have some more kids, and they are your siblings; different mini versions of your parents.  Pretty soon you've got this unit called a family.  A circle of relationships bound by nothing but blood and if you lucky, love. Now throw God into the situation and this whole 'family' thing begins to make a lot more sense.  We don't get to choose our parents or our siblings, or frankly ourselves.  God creates us each to be the people that we are, and to grow up in the families that we are a part of.  This begs the question, "why does God put us in families?"

I think we are created to be in relationship all the time, just like God.  Let's not forget that God is triune, 3 persons, 1 God and has been that way FOREVER.  The Trinity didn't spring into action once humans were created, no, God has been triune since infinity past.  Which means that he has been in relationship with himself for all of eternity.  When God created humans, it was in his own image.  So it is completely logical that like God we are created to be in relationship; enter the family.

So our immediate family is our parents and siblings, with our extended family being uncles, aunts, cousins, grandparents, and on up the family tree.  What happens if you take that family tree all the way back?  Let me introduce you to super great grandparents Adam and Eve.  We all come from the same ancestors, its just been a really really really long time so we all look different and talk different.  Your closest DNA matches are your direct relatives, but you know what is CRAZY?  If you were to compare your DNA with somebody you aren't even closely related to, say in my case, a native from Kenya, our DNA would be something like 99% the same.  That means that my tall, blue-eyed, pasty-white, Scottish self is only 1% different than that dark skinned, brown-eyed, Kenyan.

I bring all this up to make a simple point; we are all created by God and are therefore all family, I'll be it at this point a very extended family, but family nonetheless.  And if we decide to follow God, acknowledging that Jesus is his son and died on the cross for our sins, then we have been adopted by God back into his family and we are free of death, caused by sin.

I don't know what your thoughts on adoption are, be it a pet or an orphan, but all I know is that God saw me, a spiritual orphan and decided that I needed to be adopted into his family, I'm a rescue I guess.  I love my parents and I love my family, which includes my wife's family too, and I am grateful that God saw fit to put me under their care, but I am even more grateful, to the point of exasperation, that God chose to adopt me into his family.  I cannot tell you what he saw, or sees, in me, but frankly I don't care at this point because I know its not about what I bring to the table.  I am his son and he is my Father because He is good.