If your childhood was anything like mine, one of the things you looked forward to during the summer were family reunions. It is that one time a year that all the cousins you have never heard of show up altogether and you are expected to get along and "love" these people you only see once a year (twice if you run into them at Walmart). There are many great things about family reunions, and I really do enjoy them. The food, fun (although sometimes mandatory), and taking a day to stop the busyness of life and catch up with family are just some of the reasons I love family reunions.

I guess my perspective on this might be a little biased because I was blessed with a large extended family and I understand that not everyone has had this experience. In light of that fact, I think it is safe to say that regardless of the size of one's family, we as humans desire relationship and we recognize that healthy friendships and relationships with our family and friends are beneficial.

Back to the family reunion model. Sometimes cousin Sally would say something a little mean to you or Uncle Eddie starts telling you, in a passive aggressive manner, about how you are an inherently evil person if you even think about voting for a particular candidate in the next election. We all have those people in our lives that bug us, and differences in people lead to differences, those differences lead to disagreements, those disagreements lead to fights, and those fights lead to a ten year grudge against your sister because she took the gift you wanted in the Dirty Santa game. Situations like this are ridiculous, but honestly if you took an objective view at the grudge you're holding it would probably look ridiculous too. The best thing for you, the person you are mad at, and the family, is to forgive and move on (and probably learn not to over react too).

Now let me take this bigger. One of the biggest families in the world is the family of God. 1 John 3:1 says, "See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!" If we as born again believers are all children of God then that means we are all brothers and sisters. We are a family through the adoption into God's family. (Shameless plug to past article about adoption in Christ here). And as a family we should be sticking together through the thick and thin, but sadly most of us are content with sitting in our "churches" and talking about how our brothers and sisters in another "church" down the street are wrong, or why one particular denomination is better than another.

1 John 4:20-21 says:

"Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister."

Those are some heavy words on how we love one of our own. I know we all think that our denomination is just the best type of church in the whole wide world and that the doctrines and traditions within that church hold just as much power (if not more) than the word of God itself, but they don't. If your devotion to a doctrine interferes with your love for another brother or sister in Christ you are doing it wrong.

1 Corinthians 6:19 says:

"Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?"

We are the temple of God. We are the church. The brick and sheet rock that was put together by human hands are just places to collectively come and have mini family reunions every week with your Jesus family. Worship happens in our hearts now, not in perfectly carved stone cathedrals. Notice how it doesn't say, "Do you not know that some of your bodies are Baptist temples of the Holy spirit". Take any denomination and put it in place of "Baptist" and it still doesn't line up with what Jesus said.

1 Corinthians 12:12 says:

"Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ."

We as the body of Christ are one. The foot of Christ needs to stop kicking the ear of Christ. We may have our differences or preferences of how services should go but ultimately we are called to so the same thing. Love God, love people, and do something about it.

If you are not in the family of God there is always a way in. Just ask and receive salvation from God. After that find a good church that is active in helping you grow and loving the community around it. If they aren't helping you grow in God and could not care less about the people around them, it probably isn't where you need to be.