Family Matters

Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread. Our reading, titled Family Matters, was written by myself, Alisa Morgan. My sister, brother, and I flew from our separate states to our uncle's funeral and stopped to see our 90-year-old grandmother. She had been paralyzed by a stroke, had lost the ability to speak, and had only the use of her right hand. As we stood around her bed, she reached out that hand and took each of our hands, placing one atop another, over her heart, and patted them in place. With this wordless gesture, my grandmother spoke into what had been our somewhat broken and distant sibling relationship.

Family matters. In God's family, the church, we can grow apart as well. We might allow bitterness to separate us from each other. The writer of Hebrews references the bitterness that separated Esau from his brother and challenges us as brothers and sisters to hold on to each other in God's family. Make every effort to live in peace with everyone, reads Hebrews chapter 12, verse 14. Hear the words, every effort, convey a deliberate and decisive investment in peacemaking with our brothers and sisters in God's family. Every such effort is then applied to everyone, every one. Family matters, both our earthly families and God's family of believers.

Might we all invest the efforts needed to hold on to each other. Our scripture reading today is from Hebrews chapter 12, verses 14 through 17. Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy. Without holiness, no one will see the Lord.

See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many. See that no one is sexually immoral or is godless like Esau, who for a single meal sold his inheritance rights as the oldest son. Afterward, as you know, when he wanted to inherit this blessing, he was rejected. He was rejected.

Even though he sought the blessing with tears, he could not change what he had done. Let's pray. Dear God, thank you for drawing us to yourself. Help us to make every effort to live at peace with everyone in your family. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. Thanks for listening today. My name is Elisa Morgan, and today's encouragement was provided by Our Daily Bread Ministries.