Have You Been Added to the Family Tree?

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!

—1 John 3:1

My cousin and I are co-chairing a long-overdue family reunion for our mothers’ side of the family.

I assumed the responsibility of creating the family tree and am taking advantage of a free trial period with Ancestry.com. I’ve been busy plugging in names, birthdates, and places of birth and am amazed at how the tree is taking shape. I’m especially delighted whenever a green leaf appears on my screen, which means the database has an ancestry hint for me. It could be a documented record of birth or a census record indicating a place of residence. I consider each hint to determine if it’s applicable and decide if I want to add it to the family tree.

Thanksgiving Day Family Feud

For as the body is one and has many members, but all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ. For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—whether Jews or Greeks, whether slaves or free—and have all been made to drink into one Spirit. For in fact the body is not one member but many.—1 Corinthians 12:12-14

It seemed a little unorthodox to me—to watch anything on TV other than football while the Thanksgiving turkey roasted.  But the laughter erupting from the den drew me to a comfy spot between my daughter Emma and her husband Ricky’s cousin who I just met that afternoon.  It seemed Family Feud was a family favorite among my newfound family.  Everyone was shouting out answers left and right.  Before I knew it, I was adding my own to the mix.  I guess I fit in just fine.

I glanced around the room at all the smiling faces and couldn’t help but notice how diverse the group was – white, black, Hispanic, young, old.  Not the traditional family I was used to.  Nor the traditional Thanksgiving.  But things were changing in my biological family.  My aging parents were no longer up to hosting a celebration for 50 family members.  It was time for something different.  So I invited them to a celebration with my children and their families on Wednesday.  That left Thursday open for me to accept the invitation to tag along with Emma and Ricky to celebrate with his family. So here I was—now part of another family.  Truly. For Hispanics mean it when they say, “Mi casa es su casa” (My house is your house).

“Name something that is wasted,” boomed Steve Harvey, host of the Family Feud.

Never Clueless

But you are not like that, for you are a chosen people. You are royal priests, a holy nation, God’s very own possession. As a result, you can show others the goodness of God, for he called you out of the darkness into his wonderful light.—1 Peter 2:9 

“I’m surprised you didn’t find the crest,” said high school student Mariah, referencing the pendant necklace borrowed from my colleague for the after-school murder mystery.

“What crest?  Where was it?” cried the students who had just completed the clue-finding circuit.

As leader of the campus ministry, Mariah had orchestrated every last detail of the outreach event and recalled where she had placed it. “In the garbage can in the ladies restroom.”

“The only thing we found in the garbage can was the journal.”

I knew that was true, for I was the one who had RE-placed it there, having rescued it earlier from the custodian’s trash hopper.

A quick check in the restroom confirmed our fears.  The crest was gone.