Day 61

 

The Underwear Patrol

 

For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.

 

Matthew 12:50

 

Bert and Ernie's favorite thing to do when they got home from elementary school was to strip off their school clothes and watch TV or just play while only dressed in their underwear. I had come to their house because their mom was sick - in fact she was chronically ill and in bed a good deal of the time. As I rang the doorbell I could see the boys through a glass pane in the door and they were running around the living room in their underwear.

Bert came to the door and without opening it asked, "Who is it?"

"It's Brother Jess with the underwear patrol", I told him.

He took off down the hallway towards his mom's bedroom and I heard her faintly ask, "Who is at the door?"

"It's Brother Jo with the underwear patrol," he told her.

In his excitement he got the Brother part right but used my wife's name (Ms. Jo, his Sunday School teacher) instead of mine.

On another occasion we had to pick up Bert and Ernie from school because their dad had to take their mom to the hospital While we were driving home Bert asked me, "Brother Jess, why did your mother name you Brother?"

My mom did not name me Brother, but I am called that more than anything else. To my family I'm just Jess or Dad, everyone else, other than old friends, call me Brother Jess. You see I have a lot of brothers and sisters. In a biological sense I have 3 brothers and 1 sister but in God's eyes I have more brothers and sisters than I can count.

Jesus tells us that, "whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister." So if I do God's will and you do God's will then we are Jesus' brothers and sisters and that makes us brothers and sisters. We are also "co-heirs with Christ." (Romans 8:17) It wasn't my mom that named me Brother, it was Jesus.

 

Upon Further Review:

 

Read John 7:1-5

• Did Jesus' own brothers understand him?

Read Matthew 12:46-50

• Is Jesus saying anything negative about his family?
• Somewhere along the way did Jesus' brothers come to understand him and follow him?