We Are Family

We had a wonderful weekend celebrating my youngest daughter's birthday.  Mike and I were with her, our older daughter and their friends.  We had so much fun just being with family, friends, laughing and even dancing.  I love being with my family and making memories with them!  We had a lot to celebrate and I think we all felt that!  

I am so blessed to have another family, a much bigger family, my church family here at PVUMC!  Sarah and I want to thank you for all of your love, support and especially prayers during the last six weeks!  We are both doing much better thanks to feeling so loved!  The cards, calls, texts, emails, food and visits were so appreciated and we felt the prayers!  Thank you all so much!  I love my church family!  I think about the first church. Can you imagine the excitement to quickly have a community where the people could rely on each other and called each other brothers and sisters!

In the Bible, Ruth married into Naomi’s family and pledged to stay with Naomi and join her people and worship God.  At the end of the book of Ruth, Naomi has a grandchild, born to Ruth and Boaz.  Boaz married the widowed Ruth and took her mother-in-law, Naomi, into his household.  God restored hope to this family through extended family members who showed His love to one another. Ruth 1: 16, “But Ruth replied, ‘Don’t urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God’”.  Thank you, PVUMC, for being my people and showing His love! 

Pastor Tim talked about, first, belonging to a church.  If you are an orphan and you are adopted you take on that family’s name.  In our church family, our name is Christian, because we are adopted by Christ.  Ephesians 1: 5, “he predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will-”  Now we are a part of the whole family of God.  Hebrews 2: 11, “Both the one who makes people holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.”  Together we can show the gospel of Jesus Christ in a way we cannot do by ourselves.  “Church is not a place.  It’s a body - a family with blood ties through Jesus Christ.”

I leave you with Philippians 1: 3, “I thank my God every time I remember you.”