A Family With Many Hands

(from Romans 12)

Do you know what Paul did, when he loved a group of people very much?

He wrote them a letter.

The people in Rome were far away. Some of them were frightened. Paul could not sit beside them or hug them. So he sent his words instead, like a warm hand reaching across all those long miles. And here is some of what he wanted them to know.

You are not just a crowd, he said. You are one body. And every single part of it matters.

Think of your own self for a moment. Your hands. Your feet. Your two listening ears. Your eyes that are reading these words right now.

Every one of them has work to do, and not one is too small for it. Each part is different, and each part belongs to all the others. That is how God made a body to work.

And that, said Paul, is how God is making his family.

Maybe you have wondered, somewhere deep inside where you keep your biggest thoughts: Is there a place for me? I'm not the loudest. I'm not the biggest. I'm just... me.

In God's family there is a place shaped exactly like you, and no one else can fill it. Some are given kind words to say. Some are given things to share. Some are given a gift for sitting close to a sad person and staying there. Some are given hidden helping that nobody ever claps for.

And God sees every bit of it. The smallest, secret kindness, he sees it like it was the brightest star.

So Paul told them how this family lives.

Love each other for real, he wrote. Be patient. Share what you have. Open your door to strangers. When someone is glad, be glad with them. When someone is crying, cry with them too. Don't pay back mean with mean. When someone is unkind to you, surprise them. Hand them kindness instead.

It is an upside-down way to live, and it is upside down because Jesus lived it first. He knelt down and washed dusty feet. He touched the ones nobody else would touch. He loved the small and the forgotten as if each one were his very favorite.

And he is still gathering them, little one. One hand here, one heart there. The shy and the bold, the strong and the tired, all fitted together into one body, his body, with him at the head of it all.

It has already begun, this gathering. It began the day Jesus rose. It is happening right now, wherever his children love each other across the miles, the way Paul loved Rome.

But the family isn't finished yet. He is still gathering the rest. And one day he will bring them all the way home, every hand, every heart, not one of them missing.

Including you.