Many different families

Forty Days of Prayer for children usually focuses on contemporary children, but our Biblical faith reminds us that each generation of our people has celebrated and struggled with children. Going through the genealogies of Jesus that appear in the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke, one is reminded of many stories of our people that center on the challenges of becoming parents. There are differences in the genealogies presented by Matthew and Luke and that is a subject too lengthy for this journal entry, but both lists bring to mind many stories that appear elsewhere in the bible. God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would have descendants, but they go through decades without having offspring. Abraham has a child by Hagar, but it isn’t until they reach advanced ages that their son Isaac is born. Their grandson, Jacob, falls in love with Rachel, but is tricked into marrying Leah first. He has children with three different women before he and Rachel become parents. Naomi is widowed and all of her sons die without becoming fathers. It spears that the genealogy was reaching a dead end, but the widow of one of her sons, Ruth, becomes the mother of Obed through her relationship with Boaz. Obed is the grandfather of David who became the father of Solomon after the death of the first infant of his relationship with Bathsheba.

The stories of our people are filled with anguish over the process of becoming parents. They also demonstrate that there are many different sizes and shapes of families. Couples struggle with infertility. Single mothers seek the best for their children. Families are reconfigured when new relationships develop. The Biblical genealogies reflect instances where legal relationships are different from biological relationships. In the tradition of Levirate marriage, our people had a custom that if a man died without becoming the father of any sons, his brother could then marry his widow, and their sons would carry on the dead man’s name. This distinction is one possible explanation that the tow genealogies in the gospels name different paternal grandfathers for Jesus. While some scholars argue that Jacob and Heli are the same person, others argue that Jacob is Joseph’s biological father while Heli is his legal father, brothers who were both married to the same woman, one after the other.

It is confusing for scholars in part because of the passage of time and the different perspectives of different Gospel writers. But it is also confusing simply because human families are confusing. Our churches are filled with many different kinds of families. We have single parents raising children and families that have been reconfigured by divorce or separation or the death of a parent. Remarriage is common in our culture and new marriages make for reconfigured families. At one point we used to refer to some families as “yours, mine and ours” families indicating that children in the family were sometimes biological siblings, but at other times they were siblings even though there was no biological relationship. I am particularly aware of the power of the bond between parent and child that reaches beyond biology and genetics because I grew up in a family with adopted children and I became the father of an adopted daughter. Children are loved and treasured and nurtured by adults who become their parents even when there is no genetic relationship.

We have known many children who have multiple families. Custody arrangements and divorce and remarriage of parents sometimes result in children living in one household part of the time and another the rest of the time. They often have different siblings depending on which family they are with.

Children are, however, amazingly resilient. They learn to live and thrive in the midst of complex relationships and decisions that their parents make that are beyond their control. They often become bridges to ongoing relationships that might fade were it not for the children to provide connections.

Rather than focus on a particular type of family as the “ideal” or “normal” family, we, like our biblical ancestors are led to accept and treasure the many different kinds of families that are a part of our communities. As we pray for children, we pray for their families and understand that children participate in many different kinds of families.

Gracious God what a rich and varied history our people have known. How many stories we have heard about the generations of our faith and the parents and children who have gone before us. From Hagar struggling to survive and protect her son Ishmael after being cast out into the wilderness to Jospeh trying to keep the peace between 12 sones by four wives, From the widows Naomi and Ruth struggling to survive in a patriarchal society to Joseph trying to decide whether or not to call of his engagement to Mary after finding that she is pregnant even though he was not involved, there are so many different sizes and shapes of family. Each family, however, is a place of caring for and bringing forth a new generation. Babies and children are an eternal part of our story. Infants become children who become teens who become adults. Children become parents and parents become grandparents in a wonderful cycle of life and birth and growth.

Thank you, God, for the many different families of our traditions. Thank you for the power of adoption to bind people together. We have come to your spiritual family by a process of being accepted and loved by others. We have adopted the grandmothers and grandfathers of our faith as our own and we tell their stories as the stories of our people.

Now bless all of the families of this world, Great God, regardless of their size or shape. May our human families be the dwelling place of your great love for all of your people and places where children are treasured and taught the stories that have sustained our people through the generations. In your gracious name we pray, Amen.

Copyright (c) 2020 by Ted E. Huffman. I wrote this. If you would like to share it, please direct your friends to my web site. If you'd like permission to copy, please send me an email. Thanks!

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