BLESSINGS OF GODLY FAMILY

“Your WIFE shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your HOUSE, your CHILDREN like olive plants all around your table” – Psalm 128:3

We’re in the season of the year when one is most appreciative of the BLESSINGS of GODLY FAMILY: “Blessed is every one who fears the Lord, who walks in His ways. When you eat the labor of your hands, You shall be happy, and it shall be well with you. Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine in the very heart of your house, your children like olive plants all around your table” (Psa.128: 1-3). The biblical portrait of family is endearing and edifying: A God-honouring husband and father, his fruitful wife, and their well-bred and blooming children. In its nucleate form, family is the social unit of two or more persons related by blood, marriage, or adoption and sharing commitment to the mutual relationship. Some people are blessed with spiritually, emotionally, and financially supportive families. Others have never had it to be so.

Whatever the case, God has an original design for the human family that reflects our heavenly standing in Christ. God is the Author of Family. He is the Father of families: “from whom the whole FAMILY in heaven and earth is named” (Eph.3:15). Family is so dear to God’s Heart that He “sets the solitary in FAMILIES; He brings out those who are bound into prosperity” (Psa.68:6a). The divine design comprises: A husband who loves the wife as Christ loves the Church; the wife who loves but also submits to her husband, as is fitting in the Lord; and children who are well-bred, nurtured, and trained to obey their parents in all things that are pleasing to God (Eph.5: 18-19, 25-28; Col.3:20). In line with divine Order, God instituted the family as the foundation of society – the podium of love, commitment, mutual support, stability and growth. When family thrives in order, society is blessed! Despite the blight of sin, there are renewed possibilities in Christ, of truly functional families.

The metaphors in Psalm 128, of a wife like a fruitful VINE and children like OLIVE plants are deeply illustrative. The wife or wise woman – the fruitful vine – in at the heart of the Blessed Family and Home: “The wise woman builds her house, but the foolish pulls it down with her hands” (Pro.14:1). Homes do not just happen; they are intentionally built by God’s Grace! This vine is also a picture of productivity and enduring blessing: “But I am like an olive tree flourishing in the house of God; I trust in God’s unfailing love for ever and ever” (Isa.52:8). The children, like olive shoots all around the table, reinforces the intentionality behind the blessed family; it, doesn’t emerge without human input.

For an olive plant to become a mature, established tree with young shoots springing up from the surrounding soil, what goes into the process is not minor. It demands the touch of both the harsh, dry, hot, desert-borne east wind, and the west wind that brings rain, life and nourishment from the Mediterranean. God’s ‘olives’ are nursed through both tough challenges and seasons of refreshing, to become fully and firmly grown! Moreover, the olive is a slow growing, but enduring tree that will produce fruits for decades to come. Such children are thus described: “That our sons may be as plants grown up in their youth; that our daughters may be as pillars, sculptured in palace style” (Psa. 144:12).

We can find the most strength in God and in our families – both the biological and the spiritual or Church-family; the family we are born into as well as friends and brethren who’ve provenly become caring and loving family: “But there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother” (Pro.18:24). We should always work on cementing our bond with God, and strengthening the ties of family. Beyond the basic platform of the nuclear family is a rich community of rewarding relationships – grandparents, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, and in-laws – that must be nurtured! The beauty and blessings of godly, caring, functional family – mutual love, growth, strength, support, filial unity, and encouragement, especially in trying times – are inestimable!