Family Resemblance

Best. Compliment. Ever.

As quickly as my heart swelled, doubts pressed down as if to say:

That can’t possibly be true. Me? She thinks I’m like my mama? The woman I described as gathering everyone within reach into her circle and loving them all just as well as she loves my brother and me? The one whose big shoes I couldn’t imagine trying to fill? 

The remark was spoken genuinely. I didn’t question that for a moment. It’s just that I am all too familiar with my own selfishness. And I’ve watched my mom, day after day and year after year, give without thought for herself. She has done it for her own and for those she simply decided to make her own. I know this because I was there.

When I am alone with my thoughts, I shrink at the thought of giving so liberally and sacrificially. I wonder how long it would take before there is nothing left of me.

Often, I have felt a twinge of jealousy over the prospect of sharing my mom. It only ever lasts for a half-second before I remember how much I enjoy getting to see how others respond to her—or rather, how they respond to God working in and through her.

That is the point, I realize. The reason why there is always more than enough of my mom to go around is that there is always more than enough of her God to go around. People are drawn to the Spirit of God in her, and as she offers up her own supply, she is drawing from a deeper well—one that never runs dry. 

There is another point too. I found it today in John 13 as I looked to see what Jesus was doing on a different Thursday—over 2,000 years ago—the day before He went to the cross.

He was washing the feet of those he had made his own. 

“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end … Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”–John 13:1-5 (ESV)

As I read, I wondered.

How did He do it? How did Jesus wash dirty feet when He knew He was about to spill His own precious blood?

The answer is there. In the next chapter—out of Jesus’ mouth. Describing how He’d come to reveal the Father, Jesus said:

“Whoever has seen me has seen the Father … the Father who dwells in me does his works.”–John 14:9-10 (ESV).

It was the Father doing the washing and the Father doing the sending. He sent His only Son to die and live again. Why? Jesus answered this too, in his farewell discourse before going to the cross:

“For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.”–John 16:27 (ESV)

The reason why I can afford to share my mama is bigger than me, and it’s a truth I cling to this Easter—one I pray I never forget.

The Father’s sharing and sending became the Son’s sharing and sending. Any sharing and sending I do is an extension of what was done for me first. I’ve been invited into the Father’s intimate circle—courtesy of His Son. It’s God’s deep well of love that ensures mine will never run dry. You can see this in Jesus’ final prayer:

“As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world … The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become perfectly one, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.”–John 17:18, 22-23 (ESV)

My prayer is simple this Easter. I long for family resemblance.