From the Home Place

August 30, 2025

If your parents are alive, you have relatives. If you have a living aunt or uncle or cousins, you have relatives. If you have siblings, you have relatives, and when you get married you gain relatives. All of that is to say, “the odds are quite good that you have relatives.”

Take Miss Deb and myself for example, between the two of us we have a whole lot of relatives. Miss Deb no longer has a living sibling, and very few other relatives, but then on my side…!

With five siblings, I have all sorts of relatives, who became Deb’s relatives on the day we got married. There have been times when one of my relatives does something less than glamourous and when that great adventure is mentioned in a public setting, I say, “Yep, that’s one of Deb’s relatives!” A statement she tries to push off rather quickly. But the fact is, that special person is now one of her relatives as well as mine. Oh, there may not be any of her blood between them, but because she said, “I do,” over fifty years ago, what’s mine is now hers!

Ok, let’s go to church tomorrow morning: If you are a “born again” Christian, that is you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, realizing that His death on the cross was the one redeeming fact for your salvation, well then the odds are amazingly high that you are attending church with blood relatives!

In case you are wondering, it’s not your blood that makes all of those folks your relatives. The simple fact is that you are related to other Christians through blood, the blood of Jesus. Much like gaining relatives through marriage, Christians gain a new relative every time a person accepts salvation through the person of Jesus Christ.

You see, another simple fact is there are times that I’m that less than stellar relative. In fact, the odds are also quite high that you have been that less than stellar relative at some time or another. However, one of the major things about relatives is that to continue being more than just “social” when we are around each other, there has most likely been a time when we have had to forgive a relative or ask for forgiveness from them.

The same is true with our relatives within our local church. Forgiveness is the oil that keeps the engine running smoothly. In order for you and your relatives to get along within the church, forgiveness is priority one. Jesus said it something like this, “If you refuse to forgive others, neither will your Father in heaven forgive you.” Yep, that is a strong statement, but I’m quite sure Jesus means it!

Because you and I have been forgiven, we are required to forgive each other, and all the rest of our relatives. Yep, all of them! Yes, the adage is often true, “Relatives are the hardest!” But that doesn’t make it any less mandatory that we forgive them. So, if there is someone at church who has offended you, forgive them just as God has forgiven you through Jesus. Or perhaps you need to ask them to forgive you, again through Jesus. After all, if you both know Jesus, you are blood relatives.

Today, go visit, or at least call, one of your family relatives, see how they are doing. And may I also suggest that you do the same tomorrow morning when you go to church. If you attend a real Christ-centered church, you have a passel of relatives there. Wow, I guess that makes every Sunday a family reunion, but that’s a topic for another day.

Celebrating relatives with you, Neal