There is something I have been thinking a lot about recently, simple, yet rarely apprehended in a life-altering way, that when we are born of God we are born into a family, not an orphanage.  This family is abounding with brothers and sisters, but also fathers and mothers in the faith.  While it is all relational and wonderful, it is the richness and life-giving virtues of this latter half that makes the blessing of Mark 10:29-30 a ‘hundredfold’.

It makes me sad.  We certainly have many teachers today, but what of the loving and giving hearts of fathers and mothers – gifts from God who are unshakeable rocks in our lives?  What of the hearts for reproduction, nurture, and growth? Has the church become merely a playground of experimental friendships and peer groups with only token respect to those who are a generation ahead in spiritual wisdom and experience, trees that are rooted and weathered from the storms of life yet still bearing abundant fruit that we need?

I can’t help but be very concerned, barely ahead myself of a younger, unparented generation whose heads I see being turned by slick religious merchants both in and outside pulpits who are unparented themselves.  They throw around buzz words like family, relationships, and sadly even Christ Himself in order to make a name for themselves and fuel financial support.  But a tree is known by its fruit, or the lack thereof, and it is here that it really does become critical that we seek out a revelation of the way God has, and does life in the old creation.  The Scriptures say the Father puts the solitary in families, not orphanages, and not even in a brotherhood.  This really has to be a matter of serious repentance and consideration or we are going to perpetually fall short of what Jesus intended for us in the prayer of John 17.  At the least we need to pray for a deeper revelation of exactly how the Seed of Christ, singular, gave way to many, and how this relates to a desolate woman and a man past dead.  Truly, considering where we are and ought to be in such a capacious parable is enough fruit for a lifetime without having to go far from the Tree!