Family
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about family. We’re about to add to ours. Our granddaughter, Yelena Elizabeth Armistead, is due in August. This weekend we’re getting together with family for a baby shower. I’m looking forward to seeing nieces and nephews, uncles and aunts, and cousins that I haven’t seen in years.
The hardest part of following our Lord to Korea for what has been the best twelve years of our ministry was the disconnect from family. Yes, we made visits back home during those years, but it was hard enough getting together with our own children, much less other family members. But now that we’re back, and now that Sherri is retired, we are eager to reconnect with family.
We didn’t fully realize it when we answered God’s call to follow Him to Korea, but we were, in the words of Jesus, leaving houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and children for the sake of the gospel. It wasn’t long, however, before the full impact of His words became painfully aware to both Sherri and me. But together with that pain of separation came the unexplainable and unspeakable joy of the Holy Spirit in our lives.
Best of all, God expanded our family so that now we have mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, and children from all over the world. And many of you who receive these posts are part of that family. And you are dear to us!
You are the fulfillment of the promise of Jesus, who assures His followers that those who do leave family for the sake of the gospel will receive a hundredfold “now in this time, houses and brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands.”
God is so good. He is graciously allowing us to renew our family relationships while, at the same time, embracing our family in Christ from around the world.
For this reason, I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. (Ephesians 3:14-15)
May God richly bless our family of faith.
In Christ,
Dan
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