Family: Psalms 68:6

                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              
                                                                                                                                                              

I went to a wedding last Saturday.  Shane and Melody were my daughter's friends through her former boyfriend, Joe; a drug-dealer currently in federal prison, who's the father of my 6-year old grandson.  I knew them all through my daughter's association with them...which horrified me no end.

Like all my daughter's friends and acquaintances, Joe, Melody, and Shane were druggies.  Low-lifes.  Several rungs lower on the social ladder, to my notion, than trailer-court trash.  Not the kind of people I'd choose to hang out with.

But I did, because my daughter was one of them, and part of the drug-life.  I hated that life: and frankly, hated her associates who (as I saw it) encouraged my beloved daughter to belong to their drug-life world (...even while I knew she chose it).

I prayed for my daughter for many years, that she'd see and choose Life (Who Jesus said He IS).  Through a drug-arrest, God answered my prayers of desperation.  And through a drug-arrest and conviction, He also brought Joe to Himself.  Maybe Joe's mom loves him the same way I love my daughter, and was praying for him.

Maybe Shane and Melody's family and friends were also praying for them...or maybe God was just being His incomprehensively-merciful Self.  He also brought them to love Him, and love His word.  It's crazy...Who does that kind of thing ?!?!  Nobody...else.

Joe, Shane, Melody...enemies of God (maybe my daughter's name should be on that list...and mine ?).  God made them His Own children, brothers and sisters of Jesus (Romans 5:10).  The family-resemblance is unmistakeable, in so many things I've seen them do, and heard from them.  God has truly made them teachers and models to me in more ways than I can count.

And He's made them greatly more even than that.

I went to Shane and Melody's wedding Saturday.  It was a family celebration.  Our Father was there, blessing them, and blessing each one of us there, by the joy of His Presence.

You can't pick your family...either when you're born, or when you're born again: God picks.  I'd have never picked any low-life druggies as my family.  But God did.  He's wiser than me: and He's made me fall in love with them, in His family with them.

"God sets the lonely in families..." (Psalms 68:6, NIV)