Are You Red, Black or Have No Nametag at All?

At a recent family reunion, my grandson was fascinated with the name tags. Some were red and others were black. The observant 7 year old began questioning why his and mine were red, but Grumps and Gammy had black ones. 

You see our family has a tradition that the direct descendants of Ellis and Elvira Wright have red on their tags which is representative of the fact that we are in the bloodline. I had to explain to Will that my tag was red because I was a granddaughter on the original family tree and since he was my grandson he was in the bloodline too. He got that pretty quickly, but trying to explain that Hal was in the family because he was married to Jane and Gammy had a black nametag because she was married to PapaT was a bit more challenging. However once he got the concept, he went around declaring who was who according to the color represented on their badge.

In God’s family there are two colors also. The Jews are the direct bloodline, but God has graciously adopted all of us who have accepted His Son Jesus into His family as well. A very distinct difference is that once a person is a member of God’s family, nothing or no one can cast us from being a part of it. 

It doesn’t matter to the Father if we are blood or adopted into His family just as long as we are a part of it.

Ephesians 1:3-5 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will—to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.

http://www.wlbt.com/story/19218998/2012/08/07/walts-look-around-family-reunion is a link to the news coverage of the reunion if you are interested.

www.hearthope.org