FAMILY LOVE

FAMILY LOVE

 Two months ago, Belinda and I lost our beloved daughter, Whitney Marie McClendon.  It’s been quite a challenging transition, especially since we are focused on the care and support of our granddaughter, Kennedy, who lost her mother.  Remember four-year-old Kennedy in your prayers.  She cries and calls for her mother at bedtime, and our hearts are deeply saddened to observe her ongoing grief.

 Recently, we experienced another major loss.  Last Saturday, our family laid to rest the 4^th born of 10 siblings, Bishop J. Richard Bass.  Richard was an outstanding human being, a loving husband, father, grandfather, sibling and friend – highly regarded as a genuine Christian, church statesman and ministry colleague.  Our hearts go out to Delphia, his wife, and the 8 children who adored him.  Richard afforded me the honor and privilege of serving as his eulogist, a rather easy and comfortable task to fulfill.  Rest well, my brother, and we’ll see you in the Rapture.

 I found myself musing over this thought: ‘What does family actually represent?’  What is this unique phenomenon that constitutes such a curious and wondrous blend of life experiences?  For many, it is simultaneously a habitation of happiness and a place of pain.  Unquestionably, it represents a lasting legacy of love, but it can also be deeply impacted by feelings of isolation, loneliness, or even rejection.  It occurs to me that family is a divinely appointed process for personal purification and collective maturation.

 Much like The Word, which cleanses and sanctifies our attitudes and actions, FAMILY is a DIVINE AGENT OF CHANGE in the life of each participating stakeholder.  It may well be that God utilizes the family womb to shape and transform us as we embrace its ever-present opportunities for nurture, friendship and fellowship along with its diametrically opposite potential for struggle, hurt and division.  I know it might seem to be an odd and counter-intuitive statement to make, but perhaps GOD did not intend for family life to always be an experience of carefree and unencumbered ease.  Because struggle should never permanently define or separate us; it should grow, develop and unite us.  That is the divine intention; there is purpose in pressure.

 I read a Facebook posting that my daughter, Kimberly Bass-Seaton, had written.  She gave a positive ‘shout-out’ to her siblings, reminding them that nothing (not even times of disagreement) could ever alter her feelings and commitment to unconditional love.  I am always touched and transformed by Kim’s words.

 Bottom-line: Family should be a cocoon of mutual acceptance and unconditional love.  Just as caterpillars develop into butterflies inside their cocoons, so it is with families.  Family is our haven, our refuge, our security, our safety net, our shelter and our place of mission-critical development.  To be sure, there are times when we might get-on-each-others-nerves (so to speak), times when we could be tempted to surrender to doubt and despair, times when we even question the worth and wisdom of sustaining those God-ordained relationships.  Yes, there are those times.  But TRUE LOVE consistently calls us back to THE FAMILY BOSOM.  Indeed, it is a heavenly haven for nurturing and strengthening our love.

 WE ARE FAMILY FOREVER…in time and eternity.  So never doubt.  Never give up.

 Sisters and brothers, be continually blessed, and please (above all else) MAKE SURE YOU ARE READY TO MEET OUR SOON COMING KING.  Maranatha!