family

So last week was family day, and since my family is not here I got to hangout with a few friends. But then this made me think about my family in general...

I have been living away from my family for a long time, since I came to Waterloo for University. Of course, the first few months were tough, very homesick, but I got used to it and by God's grace I was able to find a very good community.

As well I was thinking on the several issues that both my parent's families have to deal with throughout the years. A lot of these issues are caused by money, pride or selfishness. Being away from home has its benefit as it "shielded" me from all the family drama that happening. But at the same time, it is unfortunate that I am not present to make some sort of difference.

On a recent family day, I went to hangout with a group of friends, and they decided to ask from a series of 36 questions that will lead you to fall in love with a person ( http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/11/fashion/no-37-big-wedding-or-small.html?_r=0 ), of course we were discussing it just for fun as we wanted to make some sort of interesting conversation on the car. One of the questions chosen was "if you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?"

This is interesting, because I am pretty sure that there are many things on how I was raised by my parents that could have been better. But at the same time, I don't know if I would change anything. Because even if there are many imperfect factors on how I was raised, this "environment" has shaped me in some way on who I am now, and I also believe that God has used certain aspects of my "turbulent" childhood to teach me how important relationships are, how much should I care for them, how important it is to be gracious and generous towards others.

God is very gracious as He will situations that we think are bad for a good purpose.

In a Christian community, conflicts among members are bound to happen because we are all sinful. I don't think we can more conflict-free when comparing ourselves to a non-Christian community. But I think a key difference is that we as Christians are called to love one another, even if the other party offend us, and that's when we need to be extra gracious and generous towards others. And that cannot be done alone, but only by God's Spirit that live in us.