Today's passage is Nehemiah 7:5-38. The Lord inspires Nehemiah to register all the families and he finds the genealogical tables of the returnees.
Beginning with the common people, he lists the families and their towns.
Yesterday I left my daughter Tess in Carolina and I arrived in Ottawa and met my mother and step-father at whose house I will stay for two days.
Today I meet my son and his wife and daughter.
Tomorrow I meet my eldest daughter and her family and will stay overnight at their house.
Then I will pick up my grandson at the airport. He is arriving from the US. Then I will go with him to another town to see his mother, my daughter Erika.
We will stay overnight and go to church. My grandson will be baptized this summer.
Then I will return to Ottawa to meet my sister and stay overnight with her.
Then I will return to Korea to my wife.
My family is scattered around the world.
Like Nehemiah, I can make lists of towns and put the numbers of my family members beside it.
What binds us, what connects us?
In one way, I am the connector.
God loves all my family members, but only my wife and my daughter Erika worship the Lord.
My son and his family are lost in a false spirituality that separates them from all of us. They have made an idol of their daughter who doesn't go to school because they don't want her infected by normal people.
At the mention of Jesus they run away.
My eldest daughter's family all believe in God but don't go to church anymore.
My sister won't go to church.
My parents don't go to church because they are humanists.
My youngest daughter goes to church with me when I visit and with her friends who are regular worshippers. My daughter's mother is a humanist.
I love them all. They are my family. I pray for them every day.
I pray to accept them and see them objectively with God's mind and with love.
I remind them that God loves them and calls them to a spiritual community.
I know I cannot change them, only God can. But I remind them of the Lord.
I am a messenger like Nehemiah.
My presence and my love is their reminder of God.
They train me to a greater patience of love.
My application is to share some of my story with them today.
God has put in my mind the story of the boy I expelled and then repented.
God's work in me is what connects my family.
