Family Resemblance
My grandfather lost his hair, not all of it but enough to expose a sizable portion of the top of his head. Then there was my dad faithfully following in his father's footsteps - or maybe scalp-steps or whatever. He was bald in most of the same spots that his dad was.
Of course in my younger days it never occurred to me that the scourge of going bald would come anywhere near me. Even in my mid-30s I had a crop of hair to be proud of. And then one day I saw a photo of a bloke who had jumped from a swinging rope into the McIntyre River running through my brother-in-law's property, and the photo was of me coming to the surface after the dive, and there was this very clear bald patch on top of this head. Not my head surely!!
O well - welcome to the third generation of going bald! I was reminded of what someone said, "One day you get up in the morning and you look in the mirror, and suddenly there is someone else there. You are looking at someone a lot like your father." Fortunately my wife and I had four daughters, so there is no fourth generation to go bald.
Now it's true we all know about family resemblance, whether it's hair, or height, or face, or cholesterol, metabolism, or even health problems; but there are family resemblances that are less obvious and yet they're much more damaging.
They damage our marriage, our kids, our close relationships, our future, and how we see ourselves. We pick them up from our parents - their ways of talking and acting that we didn't like in them, and suddenly we hear ourselves sounding like Mum or Dad. We're treating others like our parents treated us. We didn't like it. And yet we react, we communicate, we live - as they did - in ways that we never meant to repeat.
Of course, if we are parents, now we are marking another generation who will have to go through the same pain we have unless something changes, which seems unlikely. If we could change some of these things, we would have by now. It's almost as if there's this man or woman we would like to be, that we need to be, and then there's this person we really are. There's a huge gap in between.
In I Peter 1:18 there is some good news for each of us. Here's what it says: "Christ has redeemed us from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, with the precious blood of Christ." Did you hear that word - redeemed? That's a hope word. You and I don't have to be what our parents were and maybe all the generations before that. These family germs can stop in your generation, but not with your power.
There's a six-letter word that bridges the gap between the person you want to be and the person you are. Here's the word: Saviour. That's a Rescuer from the spiritual cancer the Bible calls sin. It's not so much the breaking of some religious rules. It's a lot deeper than that. It's the issue of who's really God in your life.
Sadly, many have made the choice Frank Sinatra sang about, "I'll do it my way." And because of that, they have ignored God's way and they have become enslaved to the dark side of their lives, causing untold pain and broken relationships. If you fit the description, you need God to direct you in those ways which spell freedom and which heal the hurt in your life and the hurt you have caused in the lives of others.
But remember the Saviour. Your redeeming (being made new) has something to do with the shedding of His innocent blood on that dreadful cross. I Peter 2:24, a little later in this same book in the Bible explains it. It says, "He bore our sins in His own body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness."
He took the power, He took the penalty, He took the pain of every sin on Himself. It means you can be forgiven, every sin erased from God's book of judgment; the beginning of your liberation. You can be changed, like the Bible says, "You can be a new creation in Christ."
I have experienced it. Thousands I've known have experienced it. What we could never change, Jesus has been able to miraculously transform. If you were to repent of all your sins, love, follow and give yourself to Jesus today, you could finally say of all that sin baggage, "It stops here. It's hurt me long enough. It's hurt enough people.
In Jesus I have been forgiven and thankfully receive the power of the Holy Spirit to make me a new person." When Jesus is your Saviour and Lord, you have the power of the only Man who ever conquered death, changing you from the inside out. Commit yourself to Him today, and know a freedom, a peace and joy you have never known before.
I can't offer you a whole lot of help on the physical resemblances that you get from your family. But where you really need hope is for the kind of person you are on the inside - and there is a powerful Saviour for that.
By God's grace, you can stop those ugly family sins so that no one in your family will ever have to look like that again or be hurt by them again. With Jesus, the most beautiful and wonderful things will happen. Keep reading His Word (Bible), trust Him, believe in Him, pray to Him, worship Him. With Him, you will know - peace and joy.