Family as Spiritual Discipline

It is interesting to think of the practice of family as a spiritual discipline. I'm sure someone has had this idea before, but I'm the first I know of to write about it.

What's the big deal? I think that families present perhaps the biggest challenges we have to our faith and our sanity. It would be nice if they were always supportive and positive, but that isn't the way of things now, is it? In doing family well, we learn and practice the basics and the more complex tasks of being children of God and members of the body of Christ (the church).

Then there is the matter of how you define family. Blood relatives only? Maybe even only your nuclear family? For me family encompasses many people and grows with time. Most of those added to my heart's list of family have belonged to Maynard Ave UMC in Columbus, OH or my current church, St. Stephen's UMC in Albuquerque, NM. My small group is family; that includes 5 traditional family groups in addition to my own wife and children. Several of the youth directors I know in Albuquerque also fall into the family list; and their families with them. As I have grown into my theology of church, I more deeply care for those with whom I share ministry. In a manner of speaking, I have over 50 children; my two plus 50 or more from the three congregations I have served. That is a responsibility and a blessing all in one.

I was recently challenged to better appreciate my commitment to family. A dear friend and brother lost his mother. I was faced with a dilemma: whether or not to go to the funeral some 600 miles away. I originally talked myself out of it, deeming it "impractical." I then asked my wife whether it was true to my character to go. She said, "Of course it is." I realized that I was allowing myself to compromise on something that was at the core of my being. I wound up going to that funeral, as inconvenient as it was. It was perhaps the best decision I have made in the last year or more.

It is through decisions like this one and those smaller ones we face each day that cause us to grow closer to the person God has made us to be, or fall away from that hope. Family is truely a discipline learned and practiced that leads us closer to God.