Family Tradition

I had the blessing of coming up through a large extended family. When I was a child, being together for a holiday was a big deal. We planned at New Year’s if we would have a Tennessee Christmas or a Michigan one that year. This meant either my grandparents came to all of us or we all went to them. Period. My folks and their siblings worked hard at keeping us all together as long as they could. Even after we all married, we strived to have some semblance of a holiday together for many of us. Our grandparents have been gone a long time, and all of our parents are gone as well. We are scattered many places with our own families, but that imprint on our hearts from those years together still exists. Belonging to such a tribe was a tremendous force in making us all who we are. Even now, during the Christmas season, in quiet, nostalgic moments, I long for snow cream, drawing names and dozing in laps, listening to tales of family adventures. I loved the joy of their laughter, and I still miss the taste of my Little Mamaw’s Apple Stack cake from apples we dried in the fall.

Most of us have moved on into seasons of life where culture has transformed or eroded once we held sacred as family traditions when it comes to Christmas. For some folks, holidays mean perhaps being alone or having always been alone. For others, Christmas is filled with painful memories of family drama and trauma induced by alcoholic parents or abusive relationships. A few of my close friends share how tough it was doing the shuffle between homes due to divorce and remarriage. Not all family traditions are wonderful. But despite whether our experiences were enjoyable or brought sorrow and disappointment, a Christmas refreshment can be possible for every follower of Christ. For God offers us a family tradition that is not impacted by memory, challenged by distance, or limited by mortality that when the loved one is gone, part of our experience goes with them. As a child of God, I am offered a place in His family where my sense of belonging cannot be altered by time or culture. When I prioritize who He is and what He promises, I can rest assured that we will always be together and that joy can be found even in dark days.

In the book of John, Jesus has an encounter with the Pharisees where they question him about His identity and the validity of his proclamation that He and the Father are one. Of course, this group’s entire religious identity is based on their family relationship to their forefather, Abraham, and even accuse Jesus of being a foreigner. Their attempts to exclude Him from what their idea of family was only resulted in Jesus declaring that not only did He know Abraham, but He existed before Abraham and then went so far as to share that Abraham celebrated His “day.” This let the Pharisees know that any sense of belonging they clung to about spiritual and physical family tradition was overwhelmed and precluded by the I am,…Jesus, Himself. Jesus proclaims to these guys that if they were really children of God, they would welcome Him and recognize His identity. Basically, in these scriptures, Jesus expounds on that any sense of family they have, any sense of belonging to God that they claim is unfounded and just a lie they are telling themselves. Wow! It reminds me while God has given me so many blessings, gifts, and experiences, my ultimate sense of who I am must be solely based on who He is.

All of us, if we are honest, want to belong to a family. Even the haters want to be together. We are innately designed for this, starting when the Creator said,” Let’s make a family like us.” Though the fall in the garden threatened to sever our tie with the Father, He sent the Son to recover Family tradition. The message of the cross is the invitation to “Come Home!”. The mission accomplished at the cross provides us with the righteousness to claim our inheritance. Our sense of belonging in God’s family was restored.

This year, I want to be refreshed!. I want to be reminded that I belong to the family founded before Abraham and any sense of tradition. I am a joint heir to the “I am” who was before and is to come. In His presence, there is a joy that lasts even when the laughter has died down, and all the company has left to go home. God’s words are true, and their sweet taste in my mouth and on my heart last longer than snow cream or apple stack cake ever could. Jesus’ “gift of faithful friendship closer than any brother surpasses any sense of fellowship I have or could ever experience. In this world this Christmas, I may experience separation from loved ones. I may be abandoned by those who I thought were my friends. I may not be able to experience all the earthly family rituals I want to maintain. My heart may long for those memories of Christmas past, but my Christmas present and future can be bright. I can be refreshed by being reminded God has said personally, “Come Home for the holidays! Fill it with me and my presence; let me surround you with my love and peace. It’s a family tradition!

God, let my ultimate joy and sense of celebration this Christmas season be that I belong to you. Thank you that Christ came to invite me back home, where I belong with you and the rest of your family. Thank you for preparing the spectacular party where we will all be together once more. Until then, let me hold tight to your family traditions of love, light, forgiveness, and hope.