Restoring Faith Foundation

Some of our family trees don’t bear good fruit. Some of them have dark and twisted branches, and others are bent and broken. Some fruit is rotten, while some never grew. How do you build a sense of identity when the home you come from isn’t a pattern with which you want to identify? How do you form a view of home that aligns with God’s when it feels like everything is against you?

Perhaps you haven’t asked those questions, but you’ve felt them in your heart. Your family line is littered with the wreckage of bad decisions and broken relationships. You are reflecting on the eternal purpose of the home and its tasks, but your mind can’t let go of the ugliness home has been. Your family line is so intertwined with your view of home, they’re almost inseparable. And that makes sense. Family and home are integrally connected. Our identities are shaped in the spaces we live.

The Bible speaks to our desire for an identity, for a history, for a family tree. The gospel of Jesus Christ offers a legacy to the legacy-less, an identity to the lost, and a family for those who are alone. The chains of our physical family legacy are broken by the spiritual family legacy we have inherited through Christ. The consequences and implications are not erased; we still live in a fallen world being sanctified by the Holy Spirit. We must still allow the Lord to free us from unhealthy patterns, sometimes through the practical helps of counseling, science, and sociology. But this freedom begins with acknowledging our new identity.

We are not chained to the past. We are not destined to repeat it. Christ is making all things new, not just in heaven but here and now: “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13). Not the land of the dead, not the land of the resurrected; no, the goodness of the Lord will be visible in the land of the living and in the places people live: at home.

Reflect

Do you feel chained to a family legacy that didn’t bear good fruit? How might that be impacting your homelife?