Ephesians 4:15-16 English Standard Version

15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.

Families are complicated. There are big families, small families, connected ones and fractured ones. Not all families have a head of household in the traditional sense. That is getting to be more the case these days for all the wrong reasons.

We cannot look to our personal family history for an example of how this body of Christ is to pull together. The head of this body is God. He is perfect in love and He does not make the mistakes that the head of our families made.

In our family history we grew up to go away and find a life of our own. We were to become matriarchs and patriarchs in our own right. In the body of Christ we are never meant to grow apart, but to grow up to be closer united by this common love which is uncommon.

Families these days get fractured because we run around doing our own thing. We busy ourselves finding our way in the world, trying to make it, change it, and cutting out a piece of it for ourselves and our posterity.

Not so with this body of Christ when we discover that we are equipped with gifts that are meant to draw us closer together into a finely tuned instrument.

What makes it difficult for us to see in this new family is that our brothers and sisters in Christ are located all over the world. Most of them we have never met but Christ knows them all and is the head of their body too. 

In that way we feel like a fractured family but we are not. We all answer to Christ.

A key phrase above is “when each part is working properly”.