God invented families so life could go on. Through families, God creates and nurtures human life. When you make peanut-butter sandwiches, teach a teen to drive, squeeze a fearful hand, or cut the toenails of someone who can’t do it anymore, God is nurturing life through you. Families can be intimate learning labs, prime places to practice being merciful. Families are places where, by God’s grace, we can give each other fresh starts and renewed hope.
This message is adapted from “What Is Family?” written by Karen Melang in the June 1993 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine. Today we remember Seattle, chief of the Duwamish Confederacy, who died in 1866.