When someone speaks of their suffering as a cross to bear, I always feel a little uncomfortable.  Is that really what Jesus had in mind when He told us to take up our cross and follow Him?  I think for example, of an acquaintance who was married to a woman who was a particularly difficult person to get on with.  He once candidly remarked that his wife was a cross God had given him to bear.  I was tempted to ask him why he had married her but wisdom dictated that I let that go through to the keeper.

An elderly parishioner was fond of saying that we all have our ‘crosses to bear’.  He told me that his mother used to say, “If everyone in our street put their crosses out on the pavement and you went and checked them all out, you’d quickly go and pick up yours and take it back inside.”  I guess that’s a roundabout way of saying that there are always people who are worse off.

I was thinking of this recently when someone at church unloaded about the difficulties she was struggling with in her family.  She has two adult children both living interstate and both divorced.  In both cases the break up has been acrimonious – so she and her husband live with a great deal of tension in their extended family.  She saw it as a cross they had to bear.

However, it was in that context that she made a telling comment.  She spoke about becoming rather estranged from her children – not so much by distance but because of the ongoing conflict and her perception of being constantly dragged into arguments by dysfunctional adults trying to manage disintegrating families.  She said, “You know John, I feel closer to my church family than I do to my biological family.”

I’ve heard others make similar observations.  I think of the man whose parents were hostile to his faith.  So were his siblings.  His family didn’t want anything to do with this religious nonsense that he had become involved in.  This man consoled himself with the fact that in the church he had numerous sibling as well as spiritual fathers and mothers.

God’s people have a long history of drawing in all kinds of people to become part of what the Bible calls The Family of God.

There’s a very moving story of that already way back in the Old Testament part of the Bible.  It’s a story about a lady called Naomi who, with her husband and two sons, moved to a neighbouring country when there was a famine in their own land.  The sons then marry wives from their adopted country.  But then tragedy strikes.  Naomi’s husband dies and so do her two sons.  She decides to make the sad journey back to her homeland.  Both her daughter’s-in-law accompany her.  She tells them that they should stay in their homeland and hopefully find happy and fulfilled lives with new husbands.  One of them turns around and goes back.  But not Ruth!  Ruth makes a very telling affirmation of belonging to the spiritual family to which Naomi belongs.  When Naomi urges her to go back, she replies, “Don't urge me to leave you or to turn back from you. Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay.  Your people will be my people and your God my God.  Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried. May the LORD deal with me, be it ever so severely, if anything but death separates you and me.”  Ruth was welcomed into God’s family.

It’s a lovely thought that those of us who belong to a church have a family alongside of us to help us in times of hardship and difficulty.  The Apostle Paul tells us to bear each other’s burdens and in that way fulfil the law of Christ.  My elderly parishioner would say that in the church we help one another to carry our crosses.

Okay.  Confession time!  At times we let members of our spiritual family fall through the cracks.  We’re not always so good at being loving siblings in God’s family.  That’s why the author of the book of Hebrews reminds us that Jesus is not ashamed to be called our brother.  And Christ, our older brother in the family, has died for all our failings and now strengthens and guides as we live our lives as members the family of God.

John Westendorp