Oh do you remember (ooh)
When the family was everything? (ooh)
It was so long ago and so much has changed (ooh)
I wanna go back to those simple days (ooh)
And all I’m really trying to say is our love don’t have to change
No it don’t have to change
In the beginning, the family was the place where everything happened.
A man became so by looking at the strong arms of his father, working hard to ensure the satisfaction, safety and security of his family. He learnt strength by following his father to hunt down animals or by tilling an empty piece of land until it brought forth fruit. He learnt the values of hard work, the sweetness of success after a struggle, resilience, and leadership.
He learnt responsibility
In the beginning, the family was the place it all happened
A young woman became so by helping her mother with chores; she learnt how to cook by starting with the minute details of dicing onions and tasting from her mother’s ladle. She learnt how repair things rather than throw them away by helping fix little buttons and patching holes. She learnt that her strength was in the woman within her, her capacity to be calm in the face of struggle, her ability to be unruffled even when the world around her was chaotic, the strength in her voice, the peace in her ambience, the wholeness within her.
She learnt virtue
In the beginning we learnt about God in the family.
In the family we were introduced to the idea of a larger being …. The idea of a being that was bigger that all else, greater than our imaginations with the immense capacity to have made the world!
The being we know today as God. The only true God.
In the beginning, Christian families introduced God to their children from infancy, teaching the importance of a relationship with the Heavenly father through family altars, sunday and weekly services, bible clubs, choirs and even the value of praying before eating.
Christian families were the different ones. They were the men and women that the society could point to as the standard, their lifestyles were different, they preached holiness, godliness and love through their actions. They were evidence of the reason why after creating Adam, God desired to create another human as his help-meet. These Christian families proved that God did no wrong when he thought up the idea of Family- Family as a unit of closely tied individuals by blood and Family as a unit of closely tied individuals by the blood of his son Jesus.
Christian Families were the ideal. Families bound by human and spiritual blood
In the beginning the purpose was Love
God is Love (1 John 4:8)
The work of creation is evidence of unequivocal love. Remember that God did not create vegetation before land, he did not create the animals that would eat the vegetation before the made the plants. He made it all in a planned sequence, thinking of the impact of one against the other. When God created man (in his image which is love), the world was ready. This man came alive from the breath of God.
Then he made the woman- From the loins of the man he breathed into.
Man and Woman are the first family…. A family closely knit and woven into God. The way he planned it.
Today, that plan of love and family has not changed- God still intends that his love is the priority in our lives and in our families. He wishes that the church is like that of the early Christians where the love of Christ is engraved in our hearts, living lives of sanctity, dedicated to others, loving all and sharing all things.
Indeed God still desires families and churches that are woven into him.
God, give us Christian homes!
Homes where the Bible is loved and taught,
Homes where the Master’s will is sought,
Homes crowned with beauty Your love has wrought;
God, give us Christian homes;
God, give us Christian homes!
Kitan Adenmolu coordinates the Writing Team in the IT/Media Department of He’s Alive Chapel City Gate Sanctuary, Lagos, Nigeria
