The power of family is something we all experience and it gives us that sense of belonging. Our paternal and maternal links are real, that integral part of who we are as an individual.

We search records to discover our family history, then construct family trees. At the same time, we discover interesting facts about our forebears. At the end of our ancestral discoveries, we come back to the present to rediscover as it were, our own life. A life which is so uniquely now, and individually special… US!

We are not without connection; we are not in some endless orbit through a universe of emptiness. No! We belong, and its family!

Important as a human family is, there is another family…. the Christian family! The Apostle Paul in writing to believers often used the term ‘brothers’ It was not used because they were related to him in human terms, but spiritually.

There is a kinship connection we have as believers. To belong to Jesus Christ means we also belong to all the other souls that also belong to him. There is a spiritual bond that Christians feel with each other, for they are brethren.

Humanely we have siblings… brothers and sisters because we are of the same womb or parentage. Spiritually we have the same birth in Christ Jesus our Saviour; that common experience makes us family…, we are brethren.

But it gets more exciting when we consider ancestral lineage, that ability to trace a direct line back to a specific ancestor. Consider Jesus born in a manger, that special one, the Christ who we remember at Christmas time. His lineage can be traced back through many generations to Abraham. But more than this, his lineage goes still further back… and we discover it goes right back to Adam, the Son of God! (Lineage ref. Matthew 1:1-17, Luke 3:23-37. NIV.)

We may well get absorbed in our own personal family tree, and there may be some important ancestors. But our human genealogies pale into obscurity when we consider Jesus Christ, Son of Man, Son of God. Those who believe in Jesus as their Saviour are now connected by spiritual birth to his lineage.

Connection can be such a powerful thing… Jesus our Lord is connected directly to the Father. He is in the Father, and the Father is in him! Then Jesus actually says to us, that we are in him and he is in us… WHAT A CONNECTION!!

Ref. John 14:8-11, 20 & 23. NIV.