“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.” —(Romans 12:4–5)
Dearest Daughters,
Dearest Daughters,
When we cease to belong, we drift like a planet with no orbit or a note without a song.
A single note blown through a clarinet or played on the piano is absolutely meaningless. You can’t tell if it’s in tune or out of tune, if it’s in rhythm or out of sync, because it has no context. It takes the presence of other notes to form a song. Any note will do as long as there is no song being played. But when the song begins, suddenly intonation and rhythm are important. The placement of that one note within the song becomes the difference between harmony and chaos.
So it is with belonging.
We are living in a generation marked by loneliness and depression, and I believe it is because radical individualism has robbed people of the context of relationship that gives life meaning and purpose. Relationships begin to drift, and people feel lost, so they seek to define themselves by careers or accomplishments, but these are fragile identities that crumble without the belonging that comes from loving relationships.
I’ve often met people who imagine that their life was peaceful until they entered a marriage, a family, or the fellowship of Christ’s body. They start to believe that only after these relationships began did life suddenly become difficult—as though they were now being “picked on” or singled out for hardship. But this is not so at all. Before belonging to these relationships, they were simply that wandering lonely note, ignorant that they were untuned. It is only in relationship that God begins to bring their note into the harmony of His song. When the melody begins, tuning becomes necessary, and the rhythm must be learned.
So don’t fall into self-pity when God corrects you. You must recognize that He is fitting you into His song and that you were only “right” before inasmuch as you were all alone.
“So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God… in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord.”
(Ephesians 2:19–22)
Belonging to God has always marked a distinction between His people and the world around them. From the beginning, those who bear His name have lived by a different rhythm and a different song, than the culture surrounding them.
When God heard the groaning of His people in bondage in Egypt, He purposed to set them free. Pharaoh, the ruler of the greatest empire on earth, feared their fruitfulness. So he struck at the heart of the family, commanding the death of every baby boy. But the midwives feared God more than Pharaoh. When questioned, they replied, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women. They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive” (Exod. 1:19).
Hebrew women—women of God’s kingdom—have never been like the women of Egypt. Our vitality, our strength and our spiritual DNA are meant to be different! We are quick to perceive the purpose of God and to bring it forth with vigor.
Yet the identity of the “Hebrew” woman still comes under attack. The world calls the life of a wife and mother small. It says our world is narrow and restrictive. It teaches that to serve and nurture, to cultivate life is to be in bondage. And tragically, even the church has sometimes echoed the world’s voice, forgetting the power in this unapplauded place of faithful mothers.
But God does not see it this way.
He made the woman not as a lesser being, but as a facilitator of His purpose. He entrusted the deliverer of Israel into the arms of Jochebed, knowing she would guard and raise the seed of His promise. And when He sent His own Son into the world, He entrusted Him to a young woman named Mary—one who did not despise the seeming smallness of her task, but rejoiced that she was chosen to bear the salvation of the world.
“Strength and dignity are her clothing, and she laughs at the time to come. She looks well to the ways of her household and does not eat the bread of idleness.”
(Proverbs 31:25–27)
So, remember:
Belonging to God means belonging within His song. Your place in that song is not small if your part is one with the song itself. Then it is as big as God’s voice singing through you. The world may call your mothering rhythms ordinary or insignificant, but in His melody, every note resounds with eternal purpose.
With all my love,
Mom