All in the Family

I've been thinking about family lately.  My Dad and Mom had four children: Phyllis, Fred,Gail and me.  From those four came a total of ten children.  Their pictures are above.  The top on was taken in Florida and the second was taken in New Jersey.  I don't have a current picture as they are scattered around the world: from Florida to North Carolina to New York to Minnesota to Laos.  They have grown up, chosen their field of work, some have started families of their own, with some even being grandparents.  Such varied group coming from Fred and Peggy Travisano.

What got me thinking about these folks was this past Christmas.  As I was sitting in Church at our Christmas Eve Service my mind drifted to many of the years past.  One can get to a place where the past seems so much more pleasant than the present.  We don't remember the difficulties we were going through or the heartaches that were part of those times.  The truth is that the past and the present are not that much different.  All of life, past or present, has problems.  It's not what you are going through that counts, but how you respond to it that matters.

As I was thinking about these kids, I thought that I didn't do them that well.  I could have been a better father or uncle.  Perhaps if I had been a little bit more perceptive, a little more less involved in my own issues things might have turned out better for them.  I look at that earlier picture and see what could have been.  All of us do that don't we?  Sometimes we wish we could go back in time and make things right, but we can't. 

In the New Testament the writer of Philippians looks back at his life when he did things of which he was later ashamed of.  He writes, "forgetting what is behind and reaching forward to what is ahead..."  How could he write that?  There is only one way.  He must have found some way to rid himself of the guilt of the past and at the same time find something to have hope in for the future.

Life is a journey in which each of us must find reconciliation for the errors of the past we made in selfishness and some reason to have hope looking towards the future.  If that hope is only in ourselves our history tells us that sooner or later there will be a need for more reconciliation.  I would like to say that all of my faults and mistakes are in the past, but that would not be true.  In the present I am often not the best father, uncle, grandfather or husband.  I'm sure in the future I will look back at this time and have much the same thoughts as I have today.  What is the answer?  In the letter of I John the writer speaking to believers writes, "But if anyone does sin,we have and advocate with the Father.."  The writer of the letter Romans tells us that, "we all groan within ourselves eagerly waiting for..the redemption of our bodies." Earlier he had written, "What a wretched man I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?"

Becoming a Believer does not deliver you from the troubles and mistakes that come in life.  It does however give you a place to find reconciliation and hope for the future even in light of ones current failures. The answer began for me with a careful reading of the New Testament and a realistic evaluation of where I was going.  I encourage you to move in the same direction.