Becoming Family
As a career educator I have a front row seat to the scenes and seasons of child development and the groups they grow into. Each child is miraculously unique but every group or class also develops distinct characteristics. When classrooms open and weeks turn into months a phenomenon occurs. A little family emerges.
Summer days grow short and little children become aware something wondrous is about to happen. School is starting! Our little ones get outfitted, everyone inquires as to their excitement while regaling their own academic adventures and in thought, school sounds like the greatest adventure ever! Still, there is a quiet caution and anxiousness lingering over the great unknown. The constancy of familiar sights, smells and sounds of the past conflict with the instinct to move forward.
The first days of school are filled with rules and endless procedures. The early days of directing everyone toward life long learning is comparable to herding cats on the best day, and supervising butterflies on the worst. Trust in authority is vital to the process of many parts working in tandem for the greater good. Insistence on rigid adherence to rules seems like selfish and narrow minded tyranny when in reality it is love working in the knowledge that everyone will learn, grow and eventually attain all that life has to offer that drives a good leader’s behavior.
Class is a collective noun and as the days of the school year go by, a most beautiful thing happens. The rules begin to make logical sense, work is being accomplished, needs are being met, leaders and defender have emerged and suddenly, a nation/family has formed.
The Hebrew slaves were very much like the little folks that arrive in classrooms each fall. They too had great expectation that something epic was happening, but fear and rebellion wreaked havoc in their progress toward freedom. So this covenant people could come into all God had promised, and in turn, bless all nations, rules and procedures had to be established, trust in authority had to grow, and total dependance on the provision of the One that loves the most had to develop.
Community/family is a wonderful gift from God, but it doesn’t come naturally and isn’t exclusively a consequence of birth. It is God’s perfect design for the security and prosperity of mankind. Love, obedience and trust in God’s loving kindness is the force that holds families and nations together and in turn, the world reaps great blessings.
Peace and Goodwill to each of you.
Love,
Gretchen