Family Reunion

While not under the most joyful of circumstances it was good to see my family in South Carolina this weekend. I love my family. They are a close-knit and fun bunch of folks. It amazes me the way God can take what the enemy meant to breed fear, ugliness and anger into an opportunity for people to love on one another. There is big stuff in this spiritual war we're in, but sometimes I think the simple things do just as much, if not more damage to the gates of hell than an evening of deliverance ministry or an Easter Sunday alter call. The love that was in that house was tangible. There were moments of helplessness of course - like the night Aunt Helen's meds left her kind of out of her head....of sadness at the possibility that this is Aunt Helen's last family reunion here on Earth...But there was also a lot of hope because this is an entire house full of people who believe that God is bigger than anything. Above all that, it was simply the sense of abiding love. And that's the whole point anyway. LOVE WINS. PERIOD. as we like to say at church.

That can be hard to remember when you're in the thick of it - preparing a heavy lesson on repentance for a Bible Study, or working up a good sermon about God's dealings with people in Scripture that didn't look very warm and cuddly or when we're face to face with evil. But I have to remember that God's sole purpose in all of it is to make it so that one day we will all walk in unadulterated "agape" with him and one another. And if what we do does not reflect the worth he has given to all of us and doesn't stem from an overflow of the love He pours into us then it isn't from Him...

Lord, help me come from this place always!