“Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

— Matthew 12:50

When you hear the word family, what usually comes to mind? Where I grew up, a family was generally made up of a husband and wife and their biological children. Some families also had adopted children. Some couples did not have children, and some parents were divorced. But the most common family in that time and culture was the nuclear family. In the Bible and in today’s world, though, it’s less common to find families fitting that description.

When Jesus’ family tried to get a message to him as crowds gathered around him, he saw an opportunity for a teaching moment and said, “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.”

Jesus was helping his followers to describe a new kind of family, a community bound by something more powerful than the blood in our veins. This is not a rejection of the biological family. It’s an invitation to a bigger, richer family—the family of God, with whom we live in the kingdom of God.

This month you are invited to meet family members in the Roseland community where I work and live, in my biological family, and in other family groups that I am a part of. May God’s Spirit work in us all to recognize the beautiful gift of his family in the relationships and communities we are a part of—no matter how different or diverse they might be.

Father, thank you for the gift of our broader family in Christ. May we keep growing together in faith and grace. Amen.