Family Ties – IV

Many factors can cause people to move away from family when the call of God is not present. In the original expansion of America for example, vast tracts of land awaited. Families who had worked as indentured servants to various lords, governors and influential desired to have land of their own. These people, many of whom left hearth and home from Europe, had left all in the search for prosperity and freedom. But once they were established in a location, family took root there.

Today it is a different story. Disagreement, strife, and rebellion can fuel the desire to move. Unforgiveness usually is the driving force in these instances. Abuse as a child, the rebellioness of youth can cause children to maintain an attitude of unforgiveness towards parents and ultimately cause relocation and a subsequent total separation of the heart as well.

The truly sad thing in most of these cases of relocation due to unforgiveness is that sometimes children never get to meet their grandparents. Who knows, but that God may have planned for the grandchildren to be the turning point in the grandparents lives. It may have been the very thing that finally softened their hearts and caused them to repent of the very thing that drove the family apart.

As I stated before, expansion of a nation is a huge driving force of relocation and separation. Many stories exist in this country of a man and family moving west, leaving hearth and home of family behind, and once arriving and settling never again making the trip back home. America was built on such stories, and many of such are less than 200 years old.

The next installment of this ongoing essay will address a very touchy subject. It is one that I do not take lightly, and am becoming more and more outspoken about each and every day. It is, for lack of better words “The Dumbing Down of Our Youth.”

Family Ties – III

OK Mike, (you might ask) surely you don’t mean that everyone should live in close proximity to the rest of the family? That answer would be no, not everyone. There are many who I would see as living either temporarily or even lifelong in a far away location. But before I type that list lets consider a few facts. Expansion is natural. Sometimes the population of a family group outgrows the location. In that case there are options. One is to do as the Amish do, simply move the entire family. Whole communities of Amish people move from one location to another. The family system stays intact and life simply picks up at the new location.

There are times when the resources are exhausted in a particular area and expansion must take place. One instance would be the dust bowl era in which people literally either moved, or died where they were. Drought, or natural disasters can force people to relocate.

Sometimes the separation will be temporary, such as when a person has to leave to attend school in another location. Sometimes it may be a “hitch” in the armed forces. These are some of the things through history that have always taken people from family for short times and long periods also.

Consider the missionary for a moment. The calling of God is exempt. What I’m saying is that when God calls, you respond no matter what. God will call people to leave home and hearth and begin life anew in locations sometimes half a world away. Mark 10:29 And Jesus answered and said, Truly I say to you, There is no man that has left house or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or lands for my sake and the gospel’s sake,

Mark 10:30 but he shall receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands with persecutions, and in the world to come, eternal life.

Our industrialized society has produced some of the greatest affluence ever seen by a people. And then again it has driven families farther apart that ever before. So that leads us to ask the question; What drives people to leave family? Consider that question and I will talk about that in the next installment.