“You’ll be my kid who moves out-of-state,” Mom told nine-year-old me as I sobbed about moving thirty minutes away. Having lived three, six, and now eight hours away over the past decade, I have to admit: she called it.
Being far from family is tough. You miss holidays, parties, major events, and small moments. You have to build new social circles and support systems from scratch. Sometimes the distance between families isn’t geography: disagreements, sin, and even death separate us. How can the void be filled?
Jesus said those who leave everyone and everything for His sake will “receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life” (Mark 10:30). Wouldn’t it be great to belong to a “hundredfold home”? Imagine having a “hundredfold family” who remember your birthday, call when you are sick, and encourage instead of mock – all because they genuinely love you.
That’s what church should be. “Brother” and “Sister” in the New Testament weren’t fancy titles: they were descriptions. For some of us, that’s what the church is now. For others, it is what it could be, if we all will work at it.
First, we must change our thinking. Church isn’t “shopped” or “hopped”. It is family. What happens to a marriage when a spouse is willing to walk away? We can’t view church as something we leave when we aren’t satisfied. We need to commit.
Second, we must change our speaking. We need to be genuinely interested in each other and be willing to open up beyond pleasantries. Just being related doesn’t guarantee relationship. We need to engage.
Third, we must change our actions. We need to actively seek what builds up others. A shopper seeks what makes them happy: family seeks what’s best for each other.
However far from home we go, Jesus offers us family a “hundredfold”. It’s up to us to work on it.