Spiritually Speaking – June 2021

“Submit yourselves to one another because of your reverence for Christ.”
Ephesians 5:21

How can the Bible help us build good and wholesome families?

We all need practical help from time-to-time, don’t we? We don’t need pie-in-the-sky help; we don’t need fancy and lofty thoughts; but we do need real concrete help in dealing with real life issues and problems. That’s what I want to deal with today.

What would it mean for each member of a family to always look at one another through the eyes of Christ?

Lastly, what would it mean for all of us to realize that we’re held together in a deep spiritual bond in our families, and that Christ himself is that bond?

This last Christmas, Becki Barns gave her husband Brent a very touching and beautiful gift. First, she gave him a special song on a CD to listen to—a song entitled, “Lord, I Want to be Just Like You” by Joy Becker and Dan Dean. This is a song about a Dad and his little son. And then she gave him a package in which he found a framed picture.

In the middle of that picture was a snapshot of Brent out mowing the front lawn – wearing his shirt and his shorts, walking away from the camera and mowing the lawn.

Walking behind him a little ways to the side – also wearing his shirt and his shorts —and pushing a little plastic lawn mower, was their son Carter. It’s such a very tender and touching scene.

But even more so are the words above and beneath the snapshot, words from that Becker and Dean song.

It says at the top: “Lord, I want to be just like you.”  Below, it says, “Because he wants to be just like me.”

Isn’t that beautiful? Isn’t that wonderful? Over the years, I’m sure that picture and those words will remind Brent that his parenthood and his fatherhood are a spiritual matter…

…that it’s in Christ that his two sons will receive from him what they most deeply need – and what they most deeply must have in life.

I guess I hope that maybe you and I might make that discovery too.

Happy families have something going for them that’s deeply spiritual in nature.

They’re able to see one another through deeply spiritual eyes. They’re able to love one another out of a deep spiritual reservoir. They’re able to be there for one another because of a deep spiritual bond that weaves its way through each one of their lives…and finally holds all of them together as one.

That bond, that deeply spiritual and invisible bond, is none other than Christ himself…  helping us to become all that we’d like to be.

Amen

The Reverend Doctor Norman Neaves
Church of the Servant—Oklahoma City, OK