Choosing and Cherishing

At our 50th anniversary celebration a year ago

I remember talking with someone once who was debating whether to include a grown step child in his will. He wanted to make sure everything about the “home place” would “stay in the family”, and didn’t feel good about the idea of having an unrelated person get part of the family inheritance.

I couldn't resist pointing out that every family starts as a union of two people who are not biologically related but people who have bonded together by choice. They do this in fulfillment of  the Biblical text, “For this reason shall a person leave father and mother (with whom they are biologically related), and shall cleave to their spouse (with whom they are not biologically related), and the two shall become united, as one.” 

Then, of course, this union of two people can produce offspring who in turn will later leave them to form other unions. And so life gets passed on, from generation to generation.

Paul Peachy writes that typically our strongest ties are not our biological ones (those that are unwilled) but the covenanted ones that are willed, or chosen.

Two kinds of “blessed ties that bind our hearts ” are our marriages and baptisms. In each case we form covenant bonds that have the potential of blessing us forever.