You Belong by Pete BriscoeSample

How You Can Live Differently

You don’t choose your family. They are God’s gift to you, as you are to them. — Desmond Tutu

Our church supports a missionary family in India, a family that displays perfectly the family of God—not because they are perfect (Ha!) but because they aren’t perfect, yet they have been assembled perfectly, just as God has assembled us.

It all started one day when they came out of their home and found a naked, one-day-old girl lying on their front step. Alone, abandoned, dying. They picked her up, bundled her up warmly and held her to their chest. She lived, and they kept her as their own. They began to hear about others who had been thrown out like trash (literally) on the side of the road. One by one these newborn girls have been brought into the missionary's home. At last count there are more than twenty of them who are growing in Christ in this crazy family. It’s messy and loud, but it’s real. Really real. When the mother was asked what she was going to do with all these girls, she replied, “I’m going to give them my name!” And in a sea of nameless orphans, that’s a huge, life-changing gift. With a name, they belong.

Another picture of what God has done for each of us—and a challenge to live differently in the family of those who are saved.

The Church takes orphans, the Church takes deserted people, the Church takes abandoned people and pulls them in, and He gives them His Name, and He gives them a family.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! (1 John 3:1)

Father, by Your love and strength, may it be so. Amen.