Patience & Time: The Family Building Blocks

After blowing through his inheritance in the worst ways possible, the Prodigal Son found himself penniless and starving. Desperate, he ended up working in disgusting pig pens with an appetite for slop! He eventually had an epiphany about his horrid behavior and returned to his father, repenting and asking just to be hired as a servant. Instead of shaming him, his father ran to him and welcomed him with open arms! Like the dad in this parable, God has unwavering, unconditional love for you and is waiting for you to come back home! On this Father’s Day, let us embrace Him and find solace in His everlasting love and forgiveness.

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What I love about the word of god, it does not show us just the grandiose ideologies of successful families that have no turbulence, but from the very first family, he warned us that families will be complicated, conflicted, dysfunctional.
If the first family was dysfunctional.
The apple couldn’t fall too far from the tree.
As soon as god put the man in the garden and pull out of him, the woman And they started the 1st family murder hit the 1st family.
Is a clue that there is going to be turbulence the rest of the book with families.
The law of first mention, the first family that’s mentioned, is dysfunctional.
And all the way throughout the rest of the book, we see turbulence. We see rape We see molestation.
We see drunken fathers. We see ungrateful sons.
We see the impediments of people who dress themselves up like prostitutes and slip with their father-in-law to get pregnant to produce children This if if the Bible were to be cinematic, it would at least be rated r.
At least rated her because god is honest and vivid about the fact that life is messy.
Is complicated.
That’s why you are not to covet your neighbor because you’re standing on the outside and on the outside, every family looks good and stable and solid and saying.
And part of your pain comes from your comparison because you wish that your family were more like them, but if you went inside the house, you would find out that they are not everything that you thought that they were.
And maybe you better deal with the devil, you know.
Than the devil you don’t.
Family is tough.
I would rather build a church any day than build a family.
I would rather build a business any day, then build a family.
I would rather lay block than build a family because block don’t have an opinion.
Black don’t talk back. It stays where you put it. Come on, somebody.
But raising a family see every block got a mouth and every mouth has an opinion and every opinion has to be expressed And it is your job to hold together all of these different opinions and personalities and attitudes and dispositions and mood swings and midlife crisis and menopause and adolescents, you gotta hold it together for There is no retiring from your family.
There is no resigning from your family. You will always be attached to them.
Don’t believe your divorce papers. Just because you sign the release doesn’t mean you’re out of jail.
Because the first time trouble rises is the first time they have a car wreck.
The first time they get sick, the first time they get in trouble, they’re gonna call you.
And it’s gonna affect you. I know you said you don’t care, and it don’t bother you, but you’re gonna have Flash by because you got a brain.
And you are having to how to where the real people at are y’all sitting in the section over here?
Flash my have you ever had a flashlight You broke up, but you still got a flash bike and you’re a little worried, but you can’t call and you tell yourself you don’t care, but you do And you’re walking around in the middle of the night with that little sick feeling in the bottom of your stomach because your stomach won’t listen at your head and disconnect.
From the fact that you are still connected, though you are free on paper, you are still bound by experience, and families are messy business.
We live in a time now that everybody wants everything quick.
Creek love.
Immediate gratification.
I’m gonna talk about some stuff you don’t know about because you grew up on instant grits.
But I remember when grits were an instant.
So what you call good grits, I just call gritty because real grits are slow cooked.
Come on. Talk to me, somebody. Real grits, or slow cook take a long time.
To get the grits right. But that stuff y’all going in the microwave that you call grits is not really grits.
Because if you want something to have real flavor, you got to slow cook it.
You gotta put it on a smoker. You gotta give it some time.
You can’t cook, call it greens in 15 minutes. It takes time to cook green.
You you you gotta put the meat in and let it boil down and let it pick it up and let it get a little flavor in it.
Come on, somebody. You gotta cut your greens and wash your greens and add them in at the right time and then cover them up.
And then it cooked down that all the juices cook down to you can’t tell the greens from the bra, and see, we don’t have time for that.
We want instant sons and instant fathers and instant marriages.
Listen, it takes 30 minutes to have a wedding, but it may take 30 years to have a marriage.
And most of us, if we don’t get what we need when we need it like we need it in the style that we need it in our love language,
We’re out of there.
And
all of
these lovely, we just sound like the united nations to me.
How am I supposed to know what your love language is?
I’m still trying to figure out what my love language is.
And when your love language love language, and then the kids love language gets in there.
It sounds like the day of pentecost. Text me. No.
Get me space. Explain me. No. Don’t make me stand up in front of people. Shut up.
The family started before the church.
God knew he had to slow cooking because it was gonna take a long time to get that right.
He did he didn’t even bring up the church to the new testament.
But he started the family way back in the book of Genesis because he said, this is slow grits.
We gotta cook it real slow. Real slow.
Real because the brothers are gonna get jealous.
And brothers do get jealous. Bishop, already?
They’re gonna murder And they’re gonna kill, and they’re gonna be envious, some vocally, some solidly.
But it takes a long time to have a family.