The Storm Tossed Family Quotes

Family is not the gospel. If you think that family is the source of ultimate meaning in your life, then you will expect your family to make you happy, to live up to your expectations.

At the cross, Jesus aligned himself with those who are abused and maligned and powerless and ashamed. He stood with us, or hanged with us, there. And in that powerless act, he also delivered the deathblow to the reptilian power behind the evil every one of us has experienced. Jesus is not distant from your pain; he is crucified by it—with it and with you.

That sort of vulnerability means, of course, that bad things are possible. Your parents might disown you. Your spouse might find someone else. Leukemia might ravage your child. The gospel doesn’t hide any of this from you. The gospel doesn’t promise you prosperity and tranquility. But the gospel does promise you that you are never outside the reach of the fatherly providence of God, a providence that fits you with a cross not to destroy you but to give you a future. Your skeleton is safe, even at the Place of the Skull.

paused to wonder what I would say if I could send a message back through time to my skinny twenty-two-year-old self. What would I say to him about love and marriage? I realized I would tell him to thank God for his ruined honeymoon. I would tell him he doesn’t know a thing, yet, about love or marriage. I would tell him that nobody’s wedding goes perfectly, and that every honeymoon has some hitches. And I’d tell him that’s a good thing because life isn’t lived in the abstract ideals of one’s own script but is lived instead in the sort of unity that comes through trials and struggles and cross-bearing, together. I would tell him the little turbulences he was facing then would pale in comparison to the trials they would face later on. I would tell him to stop being so ridiculously uptight and entitled and thank God for showing such goodness to him, with a wife like this, with a life like this.

If family were easy, we could do it in our own fleshly self-propelled willpower. If we could do it on our own, we would not bear a cross. And if we are not bearing a cross, then what we are doing would not matter in the broad sweep of eternity. Family matters. That’s why it is hard.

If we seek first the kingdom, we are better able to seek the welfare of our families. If we love Jesus more than family, we are freed to love our families more than we ever would have otherwise. If we give up our suffocating grasp on our family—whether that’s our idyllic view of our family in the now, our nostalgia for the family of long ago, our scars from family wounds, or our worries for our family’s future—we are then free to be family, starting with our place in the new creation family of the church.

The stress levels of a young mother—alone with her husband and children in a city to which they’ve been transferred for work—are quite different than those felt by her grandmother, who would have had far greater financial and even medical burdens, but who also had an extended family and a community of other young mothers just steps from her front door.

Angry tears stung her eyes. Tension built and boiled inside her. Her cheeks grew hot with suppressed anger, her movements became jerky and abrupt. She shoved an errant strand of hair out of her face, stormed to the washstand — And collided with her husband. He had been coming toward her with a piece of wet linen and a bowl half-filled with water. As he and Juliet bounced off each other, some of the water spilled onto the carpet, the rest down the front of his waistcoat. Ignoring it, Gareth held out the damp rag like a truce offering. "Here." "What's that for?" "She needs washing, doesn't she?" "What do you know about babies?" "Come now, Juliet. I am not entirely lacking in common sense." "I wonder," she muttered, spitefully. He summoned a polite though confused smile — and that only stoked Juliet's temper all the more. She did not want him to be such a gentleman, damn it!  She wanted a good, out-and-out row with him. She wanted to tell him just what she thought of him, of his reckless spending, of his carefree attitude toward serious matters. Oh, why hadn't she married someone like Charles — someone capable, competent, and mature? "What is wrong, Juliet?" "Everything!" she fumed. She plunged the linen in the bowl of water and began swabbing Charlotte's bottom. "I think Perry was right. We should go straight back to your brother, the duke." "You should not listen to Perry." "Why not? He's got more sense than you and the rest of your friends combined. We haven't even been married a day, and already it's obvious that you're hopelessly out of your element. You have no idea what to do with a wife and daughter. You have no idea where to go, how to support us — nothing. Yet you had to come charging after us, the noble rescuer who just had to save the day. I'll bet you didn't give any thought at all to what to do with us afterward, did you? Oh!  Do you always act before thinking? Do you?" He looked at her for a moment, brows raised, stunned by the force of her attack. Then he said dryly, "My dear, if you'll recall, that particular character defect saved your life. Not to mention the lives of the other people on that stagecoach." "So it did, but it's not going to feed us or find us a place to live!"  She lifted Charlotte's bottom, pinned a clean napkin around the baby's hips, and soaped and rinsed her hands. "I still cannot believe how much money you tossed away on a marriage license, no, a bribe, this morning, nor how annoyed you still seem to be that we didn't waste God-knows-how-much on a hotel tonight. You seem to have no concept of money's value, and at the rate you're going, we're going to have to throw ourselves on the mercy of the local parish or go begging in the street just to put food in our bellies!" "Don't be ridiculous. That would never happen." "Why wouldn't it?" "Juliet, my brother is the Duke of Blackheath. My family is one of the oldest and richest in all of England. We are not going to starve, I can assure you." "What do you plan to do, then, work for a living? Get those pampered, lily-white hands of yours dirty and calloused?

Caleb’s expression was thunderous. “Where the hell have you been?” he growled, his arms folded across his chest. “I stayed the night in a boarding house,” Lily answered as she climbed down from the surrey. “Did you and Winola and Rupert have a nice dinner together?” He glared at her. “Get in that house!” “And do what?” Lily retorted. “Write ‘I will not disobey my husband’ a thousand times?” “Move!” Caleb roared. Lily’s aplomb fled in an instant, and she dashed toward the door of the cabin. “I’ll thank you to remember that I’m in the family way,” she was quick to say. She was recalling that other time, when Caleb would have paddled her if Velvet hadn’t happened along just in time to prevent it. Inside the cabin Caleb set Lily in a chair and proceeded to deliver a lecture that was, in many ways, worse than a spanking. He shouted, he listed the perils of traveling alone, he swore by all that was holy that if Lily ever did such a stupid thing again he’d wring her neck. Lily’s eyes were wide by the time he began to wind down, and when he sent her to the bedroom she went. When Caleb came to her it was from a different direction than expected. A terrible racket arose on the other side of the bedroom wall, and Lily watched in horrified amazement as an ax bit through the new wood. Furiously Caleb shaped a rude door. “Now,” he said, tossing the ax behind him, “it’s all one house. Welcome to our bedroom, Mrs. Halliday.” Lily was convinced she’d married a madman. “You stay away from me,” she said, scooting backwards on the bed. She didn’t move fast enough. Caleb caught hold of one of her legs, lifted it high, and began untying her shoelace. “There isn’t a chance in hell of that, sodbuster,” he said, and then he began rolling Lily’s stocking down. She trembled as his hand caressed her inner thigh for the briefest moment. “Not a chance in hell.” Only when the lovemaking was over and Caleb had risen from the bed did Lily’s pride come back into its own. The moment he stepped through the hacked-out opening into his side of the house she moved the bureau in front of the opening. “You stay on your side,” she said when she saw him through the opening above the chest of drawers, “and I’ll keep to mine.” As usual, Caleb had expected his romantic attentions to make everything all right between them. “Damn it, Lily,” he growled, bracing his hands on the bureau top and leaning forward ominously, “we’re married!” “As far as I’m concerned, we can just forget that unfortunate fact.” “That’s fine with me,” Caleb snapped. And then he turned and stormed away. Lily

Arthur was six years old when I left the family. Due to my infrequent stays at home, we did not form a strong bond. Occasionally, I longed for the lost fatherhood. Did he long for his lost childhood? I did not have a chance to tell him about the sea in which the stars float, about the red, fiery sunrises and sunsets, about the storm that tosses a ship like a nutshell, about flocks of screeching seagulls, schools of fish, and picturesque islets. I wanted to spin a tale about life in the desert, about the scorching sand burning the feet and the hot air shimmering with strange mirages. About wild, freedom-loving people, bizarre customs, and exotic beasts. I remember him squatting over a puddle at dusk.

The cross shows us how we can find beauty and brokenness, justice and mercy, peace and wrath, all in the same place. The pattern of the Christian life is crucified glory—this is as true for our lives in our families as in everything else.

Sometimes in the exasperation of dealing with an aging relative, one might say, “I hope I don’t live long enough to be a burden on my children!” I will admit I have said this myself, and I did repeatedly until I read an article by an ethicist I admire on why he wanted to live long enough to burden his children. Recounting the way he had stood in a hot shower with a child with croup and had run alongside the wobbling bicycle of his children, this man concluded that bearing burdens is what a family is, as opposed to a group of independent agents contracting with one another.67

My grandmother wisely asked one night when I was finally going to ask “that girl from Ocean Springs” to marry me. I answered, “When I can afford it.” She laughed. “Honey, I married your grandpa in the middle of the Great Depression,” she said. “We made it work. Nobody can afford to get married. You just marry, and make it work.” Apart from the gospel, those were, and remain, the most liberating words I ever heard. I bought a ring that wouldn’t impress anyone, then or now, but we were headed for the altar.

The issue isn’t whether sexual immorality is damnable—it is. The question is whether damnation can be turned back, and the cross says it can, by Skull-Hill crucifixion and Garden-Tomb resurrection. The first marriage was between two virgins; that is true. But the primeval one-flesh union reflected something else, something unveiled only ages later in the preaching of Christ. Jesus was a virgin; his bride wasn’t. He loved us anyway.

Somehow we came up with an unspoken rule that we would not both go crazy at the same time.

You can grieve over your past, but you cannot change it. You can also, though, know that while you are shaped by your past, you are not defined by it. Whoever has hurt you has really hurt you, but they have not defeated you. You have survived. Your life is hidden in Christ. Your future is not that of a victim but of a joint-heir with Christ.

you are now free to exist without all the expectations that once crushed you in their disappointments.

The blurring of sexual lines is a sin “against [one’s] own body” (1 Cor. 6:18–20). This does not mean, though, that, like eating too much sugar or smoking cigarettes one is “only hurting himself.” The body, for the one who belongs to Christ, is not his own but is a temple of the Holy Spirit. Sexual immorality is the desecration of this temple. Imagine how horrified you would be (rightly) to see a pagan religion sacrificing a goat on your church’s communion table. Even those of us in lower-church traditions would be outraged. Something set apart for God’s service, something holy, would be used for something unholy, something contrary to the gospel itself. That’s what sexual immorality—of whatever kind—is.

the whole

Abraham had laid his son on the table of sacrifice, knowing that, were he to be killed, the entire hope for the future, all of God’s promises, would be gone (Gen. 22:1–14). He trusted God to overturn death itself to keep those promises. We are heirs then, the children of promise in Christ (Gal. 4:26–28). The promises were never made to DNA lines or to marked-out skin, but to a faithful remnant. That remnant turns out to be one man, Jesus of Nazareth, who joins in himself God and God-imaging humanity. Flesh and blood gave us our physical existence, but flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God.

This is why the Bible refers to the primal woman as “helpmate” to the man. We tend to see this in a modern corporate sense, as though the woman is somewhere on the office flow-chart as Assistant to the Regional Manager.

Intimacy means that we are not just marrying one another, but marrying also one another’s memories and experiences. If you grew up in a family that loves to debate with raised voices, this sort of banter might seem like family bonding to you. Your spouse, who perhaps grew up in a home where raised voices meant discord and hatred, might find it anything but that.

Have a good night.” It certainly couldn’t get much worse. All I wanted to do was go home and go to sleep. I drove across town without incident. No dogs or deer jumped into my path. I parked my car and made it into the house without any fuss. All I wanted to do was collapse on my bed. My father blocking my path as I tried to walk past the dining room was my first clue the shit-storm my life had become was not over. “Where have you been?” he asked. “How could you leave Lucinda standing there like that? It was rude and irresponsible.” “Do we have to do this now?” I didn’t have it in me to play nice and act respectful. “Can’t you wait and yell at me tomorrow morning?” “No, this can’t wait. Explain yourself.” “Fine, but I’m not going to stand in the hallway while I do it.” I pushed past him and headed for the kitchen where I grabbed a glass of water. After downing half of it, I sat at the island. He could join me if he wanted to. “I wasn’t rude to Lucinda. You were rude to Haley. You knew I was there with her, but you tried to set me up with one of your friend’s daughters, instead. Why did you do that?” “Lucinda is a much better fit for you. You have far more in common. Now, you are going to call her and apologize and then we’ll all have brunch at the country club tomorrow.” “No. I’m sure Lucinda is nice, but she isn’t who I want to date. I’m sorry if that doesn’t fit into your social plan. No matter who I date, you will never be at the top of the food chain at the country club. Nathan’s family has more money than half the other members combined. Deal with it and stop trying to use me to work your way up the ladder.” “And why do you think you’re friends with Nathan?” What a stupid question. “Because I like him.” “No. Since you were an infant I networked with his father, making sure you were involved in all the same activities so that when you grew up you’d be friends.” Unbelievable. “Since I was born, you’ve used me to network with his family?” “Yes. And it’s worked, which is why you need to listen to me and do as I say. Date Lucinda. Act like the perfect gentleman when you’re with her. I don’t care if you want to see this Haley in your spare time, but everyone needs to think you and Lucinda are the perfect couple.” “You mean the way everyone thinks you have a perfect marriage, even though you’re screwing your secretary?” His eyes narrowed. A small part of me hoped he’d deny it, that there was some other explanation. “What happens between your mother and I is not your concern. You will date Lucinda and you will do so with a smile on your face.” “No. I won’t.” I set my glass down and headed up to bed. Sleep wouldn’t come. I tossed and turned. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Haley, asking me to make a choice. And every time, I screwed it up.

And in both the blessing of rain, and the peril of the storm, we lose all of our illusions of control. Family is like that too: the source of life-giving blessing but also of excruciating terror, often all at the same time.

[...] his friends were all a bunch of poor cunts and his mother was a fool who still believed her man was coming back one day, a fucking fool who pretended she didn’t know that Brando’s dad had another family over in Palogacho and only sent them money each month because he felt guilty for having tossed them out like rubbish bags, as if we were pieces of shit, Mum, wake the fuck up: what’s the point in all that praying, what good does it do if you can’t even see straight, if you can’t see what everyone else does, you stupid, stupid woman! But she would just lock herself in her room and chant her litanies, almost shouting them to block out Brando’s raging and bashing against her door, the kicking and thumping that he would have happily aimed at her rotten mug, to see if that way she’d get it through her thick skull, to see if she’d just die and fuck off once and for all to her motherfucking promised land and stop banging on at him with her prayers and her sermons, her moaning and snivelling, all that: Lord, what have I done to deserve this child? Where’s my darling boy, my sweet, dear little Brando? How could you allow the devil to enter him, Lord? The devil doesn’t exist, he’d shout back, or your shitty God, and his mother would let out an anguished wail followed by more prayers, intoned with even greater intensity, even greater devotion, to make up for her son’s blasphemes, before Brando stormed off to the bathroom, where he’d stand before the mirror and stare at the reflection of his face until it looked like his black pupils, together with his equally black irises, had dilated so wide that they covered the entire surface of the mirror, a forbidding darkness cloaking everything: a darkness devoid of even the solace of the incandescent fires of hell; a desolate, dead darkness, a void from which nothing and no one could ever rescue him: not the wide-open mouths of the poofs who approached him in the clubs on the highway, not his nocturnal escapades in search of dog orgies, not even the memory of what he and Luismi had done, not even that [...]

That constant biblical call to cross-shaped dependence is why I’ve changed my mind about “baby dedications” in churches. Many of you will not understand what I’m referencing, especially if you come from a Christian communion that baptizes infants. My communion does not; we baptize only those who profess that they believe the gospel and seek to be disciples. As such, I cynically dismissed “baby dedications,” times in a church service when parents would stand with their newborns to dedicate their lives to the Lord, as just a way to do a “dry baptism” for low-church Protestants. As the years have gone by, though, I have seen that these times of dedication fill an urgent need for families and for the church. This is not so much for the children as for their parents, and for the rest of the congregation. The parents crowding around Jesus wanted a word of blessing upon their little ones. In our hyper-naturalistic time, we tend to lose the sense of what a “blessing” is, other than a rote prayer before a meal or spiritual-sounding language that we use to mean “lucky.” The Bible, though, is filled with blessings, blessings that are sometimes wrestled for, sometimes lied about for, sometimes given on a deathbed. A blessing is to commit another to the good purposes of the Lord. Rightly done, a dedication by parents of their children can be a signal that these children do not in fact “belong” to the parents but to the Lord. Moreover, it can be a sign to the rest of the congregation that the rearing of these children is not simply up to the parents on the platform but to all of the gathered body.

We don’t stop there, though. Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous, and he calls all of us to repentance. What does repentance look like in these situations? Take the worst-case scenario of the unbiblical divorced and remarried couple. They have, in fact, committed an adulterous act in the remarriage (Matt. 5:31–32). What now would we have them to do? Do they repent of this adultery by divorcing again? How can they repent of sin by repeating it, abandoning yet another spouse, breaking yet another set of vows? No. The Scripture does in many of these cases see the act of severing a marriage, and entering another, as an adulterous act. This does not mean that, once entered into, they are not marriages. The Samaritan woman at the well had five “husbands”—and Jesus uses that word.

But coming together for meals is about more than what studies show best equip children to be well balanced (although we care about their flourishing). It is about imitating Jesus, who initiates his people into the family by a regular gathering around the Lord’s Table. As parents, we are seeking to show our children that our end goal for them is a Wedding Feast, not Esau’s scarfed, lonely meal.

Those shaped by the cross, though, will pour themselves out for the next generation in order to say to the child, “Who are you?” and “How did God gift you?” The love of a parent is seldom seen any clearer than when a parent exerts the effort to affirm the gifts and callings of a child, especially when those gifts are different than those of the parent. A hard-driven, corporate-lawyer-of-a-mother shows love to her daughter who is struggling in school when that mother doesn’t expect her child to be the same as she, but delights to see her child come alive in a pottery class or on the tennis court. This sense of belonging means verbal affirmations of “I love you” (as God does, repeatedly, from the skies in the earthly mission of Jesus), but also in narrating back to the child what you see in him or her. The message we send is not just “I love you,” but “I love you”—I know who you are, I see you, and I am pleased with you.

Authority is not raw power. If someone in the workplace, in a department not yours and of a lower rank, tells you how you are going to do a project, you might well respond, “You don’t have the authority to tell me what to do.” What you do not mean is that the person is incapable of speaking words of instruction. You mean that he doesn’t have the right to direct you. But suppose he were to brandish a gun, and tell you to comply or be shot. You might then do what he says, but that still doesn’t mean that he now has authority to do it. He just has the raw power to force compliance. That’s not what authority is. Authority, biblically defined, is not synonymous with “power.” It does not express one’s ability to do something, but expresses one’s right and responsibility to do it as well.

A generation ago, one sociologist warned of the “disappearance of childhood,” which he saw illustrated in the changing nature of children’s sports. He wrote: “Except for the inner city, where games are still under the control of the youths who play them, the games of American youth have become increasingly official, mock-professional, and extremely serious.

Families, though, are not about us and our presentation to the world. Sometimes what it may take for a child to see the cross in the lives of his parents is to hear those parents say, “No matter what you do. No matter where you go. You will always be our child, and we will always be glad to say so. We may not like what you are doing, but we are not ashamed of you.” This is, after all, the same sort of kindness our Father showed to us, the kindness that brought us to repentance in the first place (Rom. 2:4).

The late Anglican pastor John Stott argued that he could never believe in God were it not for the cross. As he put it, in a world of such horrors—burned children and battered women and concentration camps and genocides—how could one believe in a God who was agnostic of all of that? Stott wrote that he had visited temples in Asia in which he stood before the statues of a placid, remote-looking Buddha, with arms crossed, eyes closed, softly smiling. His imagination was forced to turn away and to turn instead “to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me!

No. The Scripture does not say that everything that happens to you is good, by no means. The Scripture says that, in all things, God is at work for your good, to conform you to Christ. Crucifixion is not good. And yet, even in the cross, God was at work, turning evil against itself, defeating it with its own artillery. You cannot know why you’ve endured what you’ve endured. You can know, though, that you survived. You bear wounds, yes, and they make up part of who you are. When you first encounter the Lord Jesus at your resurrection, notice, though, his hands and his side. They still bear the marks of Roman spikes and spears (John 20:24–29). And yet, he is no victim. He is the triumphant Lion of Judah, the One who is the heir of the universe. In him so are you.

Even still, the church commendably did not give up on their mission field and sent a third cohort of women who were even older, and the ministry flourished. The women working in the strip club, some of them also prostituted out by predatory pimps, would confide in these old church ladies. The elderly women became their friends. Some of the strippers came to know Christ through their witness. Many more were given an exit route from the trafficking of the sex industry. The church leaders told me, “We saw a change when we sent in women who were not the age of the strippers’ mothers, but the ages of their grandmothers. Almost all of them had conflict with their mothers, but they all loved and missed a grandmother.

When we see godly older people pouring their lives into younger generations and churches doing the same, there is almost always one common denominator: the older generation is remarkably free of bitterness and jealousy. The younger generation embraces these mentors not because of their perceived “relevance.” These are, to the contrary, often those who do the least to pretend to still be young. Instead, the distinguishing factor is that they are not threatened by those who will replace them. They have a secure identity in Christ, so they are willing to decrease in perceived power and “usefulness” without feeling an existential threat. We find that at the cross.

This is the sad result of the kind of adversary culture, in which the church in our zeal to defend the faith has sometimes unintentionally presented the picture that our interactions with unbelievers ought to be constant arguments. This is not how God dealt with us.

In talking to a wise older man, I said how haunted I was by guilt in this unresolved conflict. The older man said, “I think the problem is that you are a narrative thinker and you want narrative closure here. You want a plot resolution, and you just have to realize that your life is not a book. You may not ever see ‘closure’ here, and you should trust God with the plot.” He was exactly right. Almost as soon as I saw this, and said to God that I accepted the fact that I may never see this friendship reconciled, my old-and-now-new friend contacted me, with apologies accepted and apologies of his own to offer. That is not a prescription for forcing God to act, just the reverse. In my case, though, I think God wanted me to crucify my need for a life of “plotline consistency

The paper looked a lot like the “lists” he would give us for birthday or Christmas presents he wanted, I thought. And I was almost right. “What’s this?” I asked, with the sort of sing-song voice a father gives to a child when he’s been handed an art project. Samuel said, “Those are all the toys at the store that I also want to take to heaven with me when I die.” I could hardly think of the words to say. Later that night, I lay awake in the bed, and said to my wife, “Do you realize what a failure I am as both a father and as a theologian? I basically lied to my son about the eschaton, and simultaneously taught him to store up on earth the treasures he wants to take to heaven. That’s the exact opposite of what Jesus taught. That means that, in terms of parenting, I am literally anti-Christ.” Maria laughed, and said that I should wash the imaginary “666” from my forehead. But I still slept uneasily, knowing that for all my self-image as a man of gospel courage, my Christian conviction couldn’t stand up to a toy owlet.

I once had a couple ask me to reassure them that they could adopt without “too much risk.” When I pressed on what they meant, the husband told me that adoption and foster care were scary to him because “you never know who is going to show up.” Now, I’m the first to admit that adoption and foster care bring with them special challenges, and those who step into such arenas should be equipped for them. But it is also true that no matter how a child comes—whether by adoption, foster care, or biological reproduction—“You never know who is going to show up.

What man and woman, if they ever gave serious thought to what having children inevitably involves, would ever have them?” asked Frederick Buechner. “Yet what man and woman, once having had them and loved them, would ever want it otherwise?” Buechner imagined what it would be like to wish away magically the pain associated with someone he loves. He couldn’t do it, “because the pain is so much a part of the love that the love would be vastly diminished, unrecognizable, without it.”52 Indeed, love for one’s children without pain would be as unrecognizable as a resurrected Christ without nail scars.

In talking to a wise older man, I said how haunted I was by guilt in this unresolved conflict. The older man said, “I think the problem is that you are a narrative thinker and you want narrative closure here. You want a plot resolution, and you just have to realize that your life is not a book. You may not ever see ‘closure’ here, and you should trust God with the plot.” He was exactly right. Almost as soon as I saw this, and said to God that I accepted the fact that I may never see this friendship reconciled, my old-and-now-new friend contacted me, with apologies accepted and apologies of his own to offer. That is not a prescription for forcing God to act, just the reverse. In my case, though, I think God wanted me to crucify my need for a life of “plotline consistency” before I would experience the grace of resolution.

A group of researchers some time ago did an experiment in which they read the parable of the prodigal son to groups in various places around the world: Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, North America. The researchers would then ask people in each of these settings to recount back for them the story. There was one detail that people in the developing world always mentioned that those in the developed nations always left out: the famine. The son, you will remember, took his inheritance, went to the far country where he spent and squandered it. He only “came to himself” and came home after, Jesus said, “a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need” (Luke 15:14). Those in affluent contexts didn’t remember this part of the story because it seemed to them to be a minor detail. For those who lived regularly with the threat of famine, this seemed to be a major part of the story.56 It is indeed. When dealing with those who are wandering away from the faith, we must recognize that sometimes they will not start evaluating the deep questions of their lives until they find themselves in a situation in which they don’t know what to do. We must be the sort of parents and grandparents and churches that have kept open every possible connection: so that our prodigals will know how to get back home, and know that we will meet them at the road, already planning a homecoming party.

I have spent time—along with many others—calling people away from the idea of heaven as the idle staring into a timeless light. If we are honest, I will often say, many of us secretly find the idea of heaven boring—a static existence for time without end. In reality, though, I have argued, the Bible does not speak of our future this way. We do not have an “afterlife”—as though our life now is our “life” and what follows is “after.” We have instead the Christian hope of the resurrection of the body. What we have waiting for us is not an ethereal heaven but a joining of heaven to earth—a new creation.

At every stage, I want an exhaustive list of steps for how to stop comparing everyone else’s shiny, happy lives with what seems, for me, like my keeping just one step ahead of disaster, every second.

I’ll be scared of a different sort of skeleton, my own, of what will happen after all my life of perpetual motion is over. Will my wife know that I loved her? Will my children see something in the way that I fathered them to point them to the Father God who always loves, who never leaves, who comes with both authority and mercy, both truth and grace? My son will be afraid the skeleton on the porch will eat him. I’m afraid that the skeleton in my future casket won’t measure up to the image I project right now, even on this very page. And that my family will know it.

The family is a sign of this kingdom, and that’s one reason why the powers of darkness want to rage against it. That’s not true only for “The Family” in abstract but for your family, in particular. Whatever your family background, you can be faithful to your family. Whatever your family situation, you can be a part of the family of the church.