[Editor’s note: Today’s article, adapted from a piece written by family therapist Michelle Mentzer, provides a hopeful reminder for any families who don’t happen to be perfect. It can also apply to any person who is striving, imperfectly, to live purposefully and faithfully.]
Good families, even wonderful, godly families are off track 90% of the time! Hard to believe, isn’t it? The thing that matters is that they have a certain sense of destination. They know what the “track” looks like, and they keep coming back to it time and time again.
It is like the flight of an airplane. Before the plane takes off, the pilots have a flight plan. They know exactly where they are going and start off in accordance with their plan. But during the course of the flight, wind, rain, turbulence, air traffic, human error and other factors act upon that plane. They move it slightly in different directions, but barring anything too major, the plane will still arrive at its destination.
How does that happen? During the flight the pilots receive constant feedback. They receive information from instruments that read the environment from control towers, from other airplanes, even sometimes from the stars. Based on that feedback, they make adjustments so that time and time again, they keep returning to the flight plan. The hope lies not in the deviations, but in the vision, the plan and the ability to get back on track.
The flight of that airplane is an apt metaphor for family life. With regard to our families, the critical piece is not whether or not we are off target or even if our family is a mess right now; our hope lies in the vision and in the courage to keep coming back time and time again to the wisdom and guidance that God has given us in scripture for our families.
Recent Comments