The Family of God

My husband and I just returned from what for me was the vacation of a lifetime. It was the vacation I had always hoped to take someday and someday finally came. I still feel a little overwhelmed by it all, and its not because of jet lag. This will likely not be the only post associated with this trip.

You see, we went to my birthplace, a little town in northern British Columbia called Houston and along the way, we spent some time in a number of Canadian national parks, and took a side trip to Alaska. My husband said I took him to the middle of nowhere and then went north. That's a fairly accurate description of the location of this little community. It is surrounded by pristine, unspoiled wilderness full of wildlife the likes of which we rarely see, even in U.S. national parks.

I have not been there since I was a child, and yet it was a home-going of sorts. The border agent told me I am Canadian despite my American passport. Fair enough. I was born in Canada.

My parents had asked me to call some friends of theirs in Houston, just to say hello. I did not call all of the people they asked me to but I did call one couple whose four year old son had been my father's first funeral as a young, inexperienced pastor. They invited us for dinner and welcomed us as if we were family telling us to send their love to my parents. She even sent us home with two jars of Huckleberry Apple Jelly!

We walked along the Bulkley River, just down the street from where my first home had been some fifty-plus years ago. I saw the home of our neighbor, whose children were good friends of my older brother and sister. I remembered on a trip back to the area with my parents, my brother and his friend Daniel built a raft out of big inner-tubes and plywood and went floating down the river. It was an adventure Huck Fin could have envied. And I wondered as we walked around if my sister loved the mountains so much because this place was where she lived and ran and played before she lost her sight.

We visited with a friend of mine who I met through a creation care committee we both served on. She and her husband took us on a tour of the backcountry better than anything we could have paid for in the various tourist destinations we stopped in later on our trip. And again, we were welcomed with open arms, as if we were family. They took the time to introduce us to their kids, and one of their siblings who happened to stop by. All seemed glad to have us in their home despite the fact that they had just gotten home from vacation themselves.

So maybe this really was a home-going. For my parents, who often felt called to serve in places that were far from family, the church became family. That was true for us as children as well. We rarely had grandparents or aunts or uncles close by, but we had our church. These people were, and I now realize still are, my family, brothers and sisters in Christ, the family of God. And isn't that at least in part what union with Christ is all about?