Make Room For Your Siblings

Do you have siblings? I have 3. And one thing I can tell you, we are VERY different. I have a brother, he’s two years younger than me — to the date. Imagine sharing your birthday cake with someone your whole life. Yeah, well, welcome to my world. Then theres the two sisters. The Irish twins. Let’s just say they came suddenly (I love y’all). Anyway, we’re four. Definitely a rag tag team, but we wouldn’t have it any other way. We couldn’t be any different. There have been seasons when we only saw each other at Christmas even if some of us lived only 30 mins apart, and some seasons when we were very close playing as kids should. Over the years, we have consistently grown to care for each other, accept each other’s differences and truly see each other as they are. My relationship with my siblings remind me of my other siblings too — the church. We are also so different, but I find that we haven’t really accepted each other.

My brothers and sisters in Christ are incredibly different from me. I have met the occasional extremely opinionated person who doesn’t know how to hide their thoughts or “advice” on how you should live your life. I have met the “I love you but you you need to better like sister so and so”. I have met the “I’m not sure you’re on my level ” sibling. I have met the “I don’t like you for no reason sibling” and the list goes on. I’m sure we all have a version of the brother or sister who just doesn’t fit the mold of people we would typically engage yourself with.

It’s never easy to be part of a family. Families inherently consist of people who might not choose each other, but need each other. The church is the same. We might not choose each other but we need each other. Never forget, we all have the same father who chose to love us as we are in spite of all that we are. He saw us as is, with nothing hidden, yet He loved us. It means we ought to love each other in our current state and not where we think we should be. We can encourage each other to grow and become better, but our call is also to bear with each other (Ephesians 4: 1 -4). What does it mean to “bear”? It means to be patient, to put up with each other and  to keep doing the right things even when the other person is not behaving right. To do this we need to make room for each other. If you’re struggling with this, try this exercise. Imagine the last person that annoyed you at church for a minute, now imagine there’s a square line drawn around them. Imagine that the area of that square is all you can take from that person. How much they can annoy you, all the irritating things they could so e.t.c. To make room means to expand that square just a little more. I remember when I did this exercise, the person in the middle could barely fit inside the square. I realized I hadn’t even made even a little room for that person.

We are called to bear with, and make room for our dear spiritual siblings. We need to have a kind of love that is accepting of them at their current state and lovingly guide them to growth. If we are to be truly part of a church family with all it’s spiritual benefits, we must come to this place. We must learn to make room and tolerate each other’s weaknesses (Colossians 3:13).