We hear people talking at parties, saying, “He’s my relative. We are related. We are cousins,” or “My husband is married to her cousin.” We are people who want to establish relationships no matter how distant, preferably close relationships, because we are a people who cannot live by ourselves. We are a people who find meaning in living with and for others. It is understandable that we want to be associated with people who are good, with people who are respected, with people who are renowned, with people who are successful, with people who are intelligent. Because in associating with these people, in calling these people relatives, cousins, neighbors, or saying we grew up together, we establish our relationships. We think and we believe that birds of the same feather, flock together.
Now what do we do with the skeletons in our closets? What do we do with people who are not so respectable, who are not so intelligent, who have diseases, who have sicknesses, and yet they are cousins, they are relatives, they are neighbors and we are actually related to them? The general tendency is to keep quiet. In the case of the Lord, He does not keep quiet about those skeletons in His family tree. He said He belonged to a family where there was a prostitute, a betrayer, an adulterer. He belonged to a family where there was a foreigner who was considered outside of the chosen family.
Yet what do we do with the skeletons in our closets? The answer of the Lord is we claim them as ours. If we lay claim to good relatives, why should we not lay claim to bad relatives? If we have friends of whom we can be proud, why should we not thank the Lord for our relatives, for our neighbors in whom we cannot take pride? It is time to look into ourselves. What do we do with the skeletons in our closet? The answer is return them to the Lord. Give them to the Lord and allow the Lord to be in every relationship.
SKELETONS IN OUR CLOSET
Mk. 1:1-17
Love Like Jesus
