In the fullness of time—when everything was ready—when the world was ripe—God sent his Son—Jesus, the Incarnation of God’s love—born of a woman—flesh and blood just like you and me—to make God in all God’s fullness known to us—so that we might receive adoption as children of God—to enable us to join Christ Jesus in crying “Abba! Father!”—heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ Jesus.

Here we are in the family of God! What does that mean to us? The family of God includes all of us; none is left out. Some years ago, I had a coffee-table book entitled The Family Of God. Well, as I type this, I remember it was entitled The Family of Man, but that is the same thing. We are all the children of God. The book was a photographer’s opus, pictures of God’s children from around the world—extremely rich, terribly poor, and everything in between—tiny babies, wizened elderly, and every age in between—“red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight” as the children’s song goes—all of us together in the family of God.

As the earth gets smaller with instant communication, it gets easier for us to realize that we are all in this together, that lines on a map don’t separate us nearly as much as we have thought throughout human history. As the “National Geographic” DNA study grows, it becomes increasingly apparent that, deep inside, we all are brothers and sisters despite our overt differences. God calls each and all of God’s children to the overflowing banquet table of life, to join with one another in the feast of love. None need hunger and thirst in the presence of the abundance of God, There is enough love to go around the whole family of God—especially when the children of God learn to share.