Blood Relatives

I love my physical family very much, though sometimes I don’t show it as much as I should. I go weeks sometimes without calling home, a habit which my father is not too fond of, and which drives my mother to pull her hair out in frustration. Yes I’m a bad boy sometimes. So I may not be the quintessential individual to write about this, but I feel led to, and that’s that! It’s the only selling point I need. Is it wrong for me to be so detached from them sometimes; is my moral compass broken and blithely leading me away from the expectations of society? Where, my loved ones, is true north?
 
The free-thought writer Prentice Mulford states in his essay ‘Who are our Relations’ that: “Physical or ‘blood relationship’ has very little bearing on the real or mental relationship. It is possible for a brother or sister, a father or mother to be very closely allied to you in thought and sympathy. Again, it is possible for a father or mother, brother or sister, to be very remote from you in thought and sympathy, and live in a realm or atmosphere of thought very unlike yours.” I agree very much with this sentiment and I’m beginning to understand what it means. In the islands, as I’m sure it is in most cultures, the family is the centerpiece of existence, and nothing of greater importance existed beyond it’s fortified wall. After my conversion, though, I found that mentally I existed in an altogether different city and the walls encompassed a very different group of people.  
 
My spiritual family has taken inalienable precedence in my mind and heart over recent years. This change in perspective has come about despite my staunch family-oriented upbringing in which I was taught that blood always came first. “Never go against the family”, as Marlon Brando might say, was the unspoken rule, and we adhered with unyielding allegiance. I believe this mode of thought is prevalent in most families, especially among immediate family relations where you share everything from the tax refund to the toothpaste. In many ways we are shaped by the family we are born to, we take on their value system and judge ourselves based on the boundaries they set. I remember it was absolute sacrilege in my house to have sibling in-fighting (though that didn’t stop me from landing my share of blows over the years), but in some of my cousins’ households fighting was not as bad as neglecting chores, so forgetting to do the dishes was a much more outrageous offense than say drop-kicking your little sister in the back as she ran down the hallway to her room (sorry Lanny). So our attitude toward life was basically a reflection of what was morally important to our respective families. Our upbringing or ‘brought-upsy’ as the island folks call it, does factor into our personalities as adults, and the people who have molded us since childhood always maintain an important place in our lives on earth – but, as Believers, should they continue to occupy that topmost position at the peak of our mountains of affection…according to Yahshua the answer is no.
 
In the book of Matthew Yahshua was in the middle of delivering a very important message to his followers when he was interrupted by one of them who told Him that His mother and siblings were outside and desired to speak to Him. He stopped suddenly staring at the the person. Who is my mother? He asked. The follower did not know what to answer and probably thought to themselves that it must be a trick question seeing that they had just told Him that his relatives were outside. Yahshua then said something that may have changed the way he was viewed up to that point. “Behold”, he said stretching out his hand toward His disciples, “my mother and my siblings”. What Yahshua was saying was that true conversion means that the physical ties of this material world do not matter as much once the heart has been circumcised. Our brothers and sisters are those who follow after the precept and ordinances given to us by our true Father. Yes, physical ties have their place, but these ties are not as significant as the relationship we should hold with the body of Messiah – our true ‘blood relatives’.
 
Ephesians 2:13 (New King James Version)
 
But now in Messiah you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Yahshua.
 
Marc Wellington
 
“The great gift of family is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you. – Kendall Hailey, The Day I Became an Autodidact
 
p.s. I offer a heartfelt good day to my loved ones, my spiritual family in Yahweh, to whose affection nobody on earth can even hold a candle. And also one to my physical family for whom my love remains undiluted. Thank you all for your unwarranted support and kindness, may Yahweh continue to bless us all as I pray that in the end there will be no distinction between the two. If you would like to add a friend to our tiny circle please don’t hesitate to send their e-mail address. If you would like to be removed from this mailing list I’m glad to do it, just do me a small favor, find out the whereabouts of the Olympic Torch, that thing has become as protected as plutonium nowadays.