God's family

Tonight Terra called to tell us her Rachel had fallen, broken her front teeth and possibly fractured her gums. As I write this they are at a hospital with the triage nurse. She will have surgery after midnight. We are waiting to hear more. Ken, Mom, Dad, Jim, Nancy, Terry and I were finishing up an evening of dinner and we stopped for a minute to pray for Rachel and her family, the doctors, etc.
This afternoon I was talking with Susan on the phone. In her preparation for Brody's blessing she was realizing once again how important her church family had always been in their life. How different and difficult our lives would have been without our church families. It got me to thinking...
The first thing that came to mind was when Nathan was sick with croup. When we took him to the doctor that day the doctor told us if he got any worse to bring him right to the emergency room. He was about 8 or 9 months old. It seemed in the evening he was getting worse. But it was hard to tell. We started to go and then we decided to first call Terry's Dad and another Elder to come and administer to him. They came and Nathan began to recover.
Or the time Terry and I administered to Jamie when he had torn his urethra and the next morning he was ok.
Or how our church family in Urbana were the first to arrive when our 2 boys were born, loving them instantly and supporting us with showers, babysitting, holding and playing with them.
Every time we moved to a new town the first thing we did was contact the church people. We instantly had a family no matter how far away from our blood relatives we were. And it was our church family who we went to in times of trouble or shared our times of joy with us.
Don Bowman told me how our church family here met to pray while I was in surgery for my brain tumor. How they worried and grieved and prayed when it took so long, praying for Terry, knowing how he felt.
This year at reunion we're celebrating the sacraments. The sacraments are opportunities in the many phases of our lives to make those times special, holy and beautiful. Like the blessing of a child, committment of our lives to God in baptism, marriage, ordination for leadership, evangelists blessing and administration to the sick. Times when we can acknowledge God's presence and trust God for our future and know God's love for those we love.
I don't know how people get through the hard times without a church family. This blog is not long enough to put down all the times we were supported by people of faith from all over the world.
And though Terra's church is different than mine by name, she and Zach and their family are finding that same support as friends from their church take care of Spencer and Anna. An elder from their church will do the surgery. (My first 2 obgyns were members from our church and I still remember important things they shared that still help me.) People from their church will pray for them. It brings me peace to know that support is there for them. And it reminds me again why so much of my time and energy is spent giving to my church. That circle of love is stronger than anything on earth. I want to be a part of opening that cirle to extend to all God's children on earth.