Sibling Relationships

Scripture:  John 1:29-42

So, how are your sibling relationships?  My relationship with my sister hasn't always been smooth sailing.  We were born almost two years apart, have never been extraordinarily close, and are as different as night and day.  She is impulsive;  I am a schedule junky.  She is a hands-on learner;  I like learning from books.  She went to vocational school after high school;  I attended college and spent some time in graduate school.  We certainly don't have the kind of relationship that Andrew and Peter seem to have as illustrated in the first chapter of John, working and worshiping together.

Thus far in my Advent devotionals, the common theme has been transformation:

- Day 1:  Christmas can be transformed.
- Day 2:  A transformed Christmas is about Christ.  God prepares our hearts for transformation.
- Day 3:  The key to a transformed Christmas is salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

Today, the discussion turned away from the preparation for transformation toward the work of transformation.  The author chose to start with sibling relationships, using as an illustration Andrew and Peter, disciples who were biologically brothers in addition to being brothers in Christ.  In the Gospel of John, Andrew was, at first, a disciple of John the Baptist until John identified Jesus as the Lamb of God.  Then Andrew sought out and was called by Christ.  Excited that he had found the Messiah, Andrew ran to fetch his brother and brought him to meet the Lord.

From what little we are told in this passage (I.e., the brothers work together, meet the Lord together, etc.), we can surmise that Andrew and Peter had a loving relationship that was open enough that they shared much of their life experience with each other.  Using our own life experiences as a guide, we can speculate that such a relationship must have included a certain amount of peacefulness.  Unfortunately, this isn't always true amongst siblings.  Sometimes, the best we can hope for is a truce during the holidays;  sometimes even that is impossible.

So who can transform a broken sibling relationship?  Certainly, we can work at ti by being patient and polite but, ultimately, God needs to heal the breech.  He does that through His Son, Jesus Christ.  Just as He healed the broken relationship between God and us by dying on the cross, Jesus can heal our severed sibling relationships, too.  How?  When we, by faith, believe that Christ is the Messiah, that His sacrificial death was for us personally, and that through His death we receive forgiveness of all our sins, we are transformed.  As new creations in Christ, we can then extend that same forgiving love toward our siblings.

May the Lord work to transform your brother/sister relationships this year, restoring and improving them where need be.

To read today's devotional, click here.