Embarrassed by your family? Do you think Jesus can relate?

“You can choose your friends but you sho' can't choose your family, an' they're still kin to you no matter whether you acknowledge 'em or not, and it makes you look right silly when you don't.”

― Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

Have you ever been embarrassed by a family member or something in your family history?  I am sure that there would be few people who would say that they were never embarrassed by their parents when they were growing up or by some other member of the family.

Even celebrities are not immune to embarrassment brought on by family or ancestry.

Ben Affleck has admitted he was “embarrassed” about a slave-owning ancestor and says that’s why he lobbied television chiefs to hide his story in a documentary about his heritage.

You can’t choose family. Those are the people that God puts around you, to help you and to guide you. That’s why family means everything to me; family can’t be replaced.

The point is, we can’t run away from our responsibilities to our families. You can choose to stop being friends with someone. But you can’t choose to stop being related to someone.

Unless you were raised in the Brady household, no one has the perfect family.

I personally have a family full of characters, but I would not trade them for another family.  I love every nut on my family tree. Everyone has a past. No one ever behaves exactly as we want them to, making embarrassment an inevitable part of life.

Not even Jesus had the perfect family heritage.  Think for a moment about Jesus and his family history and genealogy.  Jesus' family members are more than just names on piece of paper or in a book we call the Bible.  These were real flesh and blood people, with very interesting, sometimes dark backgrounds, who are ancestors of Jesus.

In Matthew chapter 1, verse 6 we read about David who begat Solomon by "her" who had been the wife of Uriah.    This is King David we are talking about.  Here we see the story of King David who slept with another man's wife, got her pregnant, tried to deceive her husband, and when that did not work, had him killed.  David then married "her" who we later find out is Bathsheba.  Bathsheba's name isn't even used in these scriptures.  Of course, they lost the baby, but eventually had Solomon, who became King Solomon, the wisest man who ever lived.

The bottom line is, King David's life was messy.  This was also Jesus' lineage.  Jesus came from a messy lineage.  

If Jesus can come from a messed up family, full of messed up people, it would stand to reason that there is hope for me....and you as well.

Jesus came to help broken people.  Jesus loves broken people.  He completely understand broken people. He can relate.

Jesus displays this love even further when he spreads his arms out on the cross and died for us.  

So we may not necessarily love or even like all our family members.  Try to keep a good sense of humor about the small stuff, as that’s what makes us interesting. For the heavier loads, remember that everyone has some sort of dysfunction, skeletons in the closet, and people that they are not proud of being related to, but ultimately that is all part of being part of a family.