What's Your "Family Gathering" Like?

Do you have a favorite Thanksgiving memory? Maybe you've just always imagined what the perfect Thanksgiving Day would be like and you've hoped that yours would unfold as you imagined. For most of us "family" is a big part of our holiday expectations.

This is where we can be setting a trap for ourselves. When our expectation of a great holiday is dependant on the behavior of other people we are on shaky ground. We aren't dumb about this on normal days, but it seems that on holidays we hope for a special magic niceness to come over everyone and for all our plans to work out perfectly.

Your situation may not involve a big extended family, but you may be plagued by the disappointments of a former spouse. Or you may be especially aware of someones absence from the table, someone who used to be there. With all of these things creeping into our "family gathering" how can we have a real Thanksgiving?

Let's start by changing the initial direction of our gaze. Instead of gazing at the family we have gathered around us (or not gathered). Let's begin by fixing our gaze upward toward our Father in heaven.

See what He has done for you. He's invited you to His table, He will not dissatisfy you, there will be no empty chairs at this feast, and He is in control of the whole family. We can rest in Him and know that one day all our best hopes and dreams for the perfect gathering will not only be met, but will be wildly surpassed.

And for today, while we are living in this present reality, be thankful.

Please read Colossians chapter 3 and be encouraged!

Three Generations, Two Women and One God Planning it All...

The other night some friends were over and we were discussing the personality and character of God the Father. As I write that sentence I am struck by the absurdity of it, it's kind of like saying that a group of caterpillars got together to discuss the orbits of the moons around Jupiter. And it is truly absurd, except for the fact that God does intentionally reveal Himself to us, and it is possible to take notice of that revelation and know Him better. Without God first extending that revelation to us, we would be exactly like those arrogant little caterpillars; with God's revelation our hearts are humbled and our minds expanded. That is what happened the other night.

You know how it's said that you can't see the wind; you can only see the affects of it as it moves things in the breeze? Well, along this line of thinking we wanted to see what we could learn about the personality and character of God by seeing how His grace affected the lives of people that we see in scripture. We decided to look at the life of Rehab whose story is recorded in the Old Testament book of Joshua, yes - Rehab the Harlot, poor woman she never lost that moniker.

Rehab was a resident of Jericho; she lived in a doomed city. Jericho was about to be annihilated by the Israelites. The Israelites were told by God to take hold of the land of Canaan and Jericho was in the land of Canaan.

Rehab was, as we already established, a harlot. She was a prostitute who had a dwelling space in the upper part of the city wall. God, in his mercy and for wonderful reasons that we discovered later that evening, reached out and touched Rehab with the ability to believe in him. She had faith that the God of the Israelites was the God that she wanted to follow. When two spies from the army of Israel came to her door in need of safe passage out of the city she told them of her belief in their God and she worked out a deal with them. The deal was that if they would keep her and all those who were in her house safe when they attacked the city, she would secretly help the spies leave, and send the city guards, who were in search of them, off in the opposite direction.

Later when the city was taken by Joshua and the army of Israel they were faithful to the promise made between Rehab and the spies. Rehab and her family were taken into the community of Israel where they lived out their lives.

In this story we saw the love of God for a woman who was stuck in a hopeless, shameful and dangerous life. We also saw the strength and honesty of people who are touched by faith in God. This was great and if the revelation had ended there it would have been an evening well spent. But something amazing happened. One of the women mentioned how Rehab and Ruth were related. This was an interesting fact so we went to the genealogy in the beginning of the New Testament book of Matthew and sure enough it's true! Rehab was Ruth's mother-in-law from her second husband, Boaz.

WHOOOOSHHHH---------the breeze of revelation came through...

We know from reading the story of Ruth, in the Old Testament book of Ruth, that she was an outsider in the city of Bethlehem. She was a widow who came there with her mother-in-law from her first husband who had died. Ruth was from a pagan culture, but she put her faith in the God of Israel. After her husband died, she promised her loyalty to her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. Ruth also promised her loyalty to Naomi's God. Ruth followed through on her promise by refusing to abandon Naomi but instead she made an oath to do the best she could for the rest of her life to care for her.

This oath took her to the wheat fields of a man named Boaz. As an impoverished, foreign, single woman, taking care of her impoverished elderly widowed mother-in-law Ruth took on the work of gleaning. Basically this meant that she crawled about on the edges of a wheat field following after the harvesters picking up stray grains of wheat that were dropped. This was a dirty, degrading and dangerous thing for a woman to do. If you know the story, you know that Boaz, the owner of the field, saw Ruth and immediately made sure that she was protected from being abused by the male harvesters, she was given extra wheat, told to come drink the water set out for the hired workers whenever she got thirsty and she was invited to sit and have the daily meal with them.

Although I've always believed this story, I always wondered why it was that Ruth caused Boaz, a well-to-do land owner and respected businessman, to take such interest in this dirty, wretched foreign woman. BUT, now it made perfect sense. God revealed to us that this man Boaz was the son of "Rehab the Harlot". All his life he must have known of God's mercy and protection on the outcast woman. Now when Boaz looked at Ruth, he saw a woman like his own mother. His heart, or his sense of justice must have been stirred immediately and he acted. He protected her and eventually married her. You really need to read the story of Ruth and see how this all played out.

What did God reveal about himself as we looked at the lives of these two women, Rehab and Ruth? We saw how his design uses the pain and loneliness, the hard times and sadness in life to weave a beautiful masterpiece of grace, provision and redemption.

One more fact about these two women...they are both in the family lineage of King David, and in later generations...Jesus Christ.