family.

What does the word family bring to mind? I mean really. When you really stop to think, setting aside whatever else is on your mind or your computer screen: what is family? - what images and words and textures and feelings and smells and memories come to mind?

Most of the time, my mind immediately jumps to our kitchen at home. It's dinner time. It's loud and chaotic and kids are running in and out of the sliding glass door to the patio and tattling on one another and the neighbor kids get sent home and the radio is playing and the boys are ambling around the kitchen snacking and goofing off and getting in the way and being scolded for not setting the table and Mom has got every cabinet door open and two things going on the stove and another in the oven and the microwave is beeping and dad gets home and then everything really gets going as a call goes out for dinner and after the fourth or fifth attempt everyone manages to get in the kitchen at the same time and maybe only one or two things get knocked over in trying to seat everyone around our too small table and then finally, there's a brief pause and someone asks whose turn it is to pray. And so we do. And then we eat.

And that's family.

But family is also moving to a new city and seeing God at work in the lives of a bunch of strangers you're thrown together to live with and being so blessed to be a part of his good good work even though you feel completely uprooted and inadequate to serve them and you're craving christian fellowship and community and so you email a random church and three people email you back and two call and then a great young couple come and pick you up on fathers day with their adorable 12 week old newborn and bring you to a fantastic community that meets in a tiny elementary school lunch room way up high on a hill overlooking the bay and you meet just about everyone there in about five minutes and they all invite you over for lunch that afternoon and so after listening to a great and convicting sermon and worshiping your great God you go and drive to a farm with some Iowan transplants who happen to know what reformed theology is and love salt and vinegar chips and then you meet a mom with three little boys and a vase full of tadpole frogs on her kitchen table and you sit and you chat with some great women and they draw you in as if they've known you for years and the men grill and the women make tea and laugh together and dream a little bit about what God might be doing with their church this year and how they can serve others and you find yourself swept up in such love and hospitality and full of a thankfulness that just doesn't have words and you listen to children giggle and shriek outside and help them make hot dogs and thank God for such fellowship. And then you eat.

And so. It would seem that family might equal eating in my mind. Which is not quite what I was expecting but given the circumstances of my eating with such wonderful people, I suppose that this conclusion is satisfactory.

I'm finding family here in the loveliest of ways. God is at work in the hearts in portland and in those far far away and somehow sees fit to bless me by allowing me to take part in their joy by watching his good work.

I'm blessed. And if you might pray for me today, thank God for blessing me so richly, probably by even allowing me the honor of seeing his goodness revealed in your own heart and life - a great joy of friendship and familyship no matter how far from home I might be!

What a crazy good God loves us!