A friend included this quote in her Christmas letter. “Winston Churchill said that, ‘There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened and maintained.”
While family is not always easy it is the best known way to shape and form children and is the bedrock of our society. Christmas and the festive season is often a time when families make an effort to get together and to be happy together. The stress of the season can sometime make that difficult and for divided families the pressure to get along and to keep everyone happy can be particularly challenging.
I am fortunate in having a family that, for the most part (!), enjoys being together. We like to sit at table together, we like to sing together, we enjoy one another’s company. At times of family gathering I realize anew how precious this is. I am also mindful that it is my family who has provided me the life lessons and wisdom that has shaped who I am and given me the foundation I have needed to endure times of challenge and difficulty. I often think of my parents, both of whom have been dead for many years, remembering their values and principles and the positive modelling they set down for me.
There is only one story in the Bible, in the Gospel of Luke, of Jesus’ childhood, it tells of him getting lost on a trip to the city of Jerusalem. The story reveals that even in Jesus’ family there could be tension and disagreement but also that love undergirded the family structure.
As these Christmas days unfold (BTW by my figuring today is the 6th day of Christmas so I hope your true love gave you some geese-a-laying or their equivalent!) I hope that your family has found a way to navigate the sometime choppy waters of togetherness and found a way to strengthen one another.
