When you think of family, what do you picture? Perhaps it’s mornings on the porch with your grandma or playing in the backyard with your sister or your cousins. Maybe just gathering around the dinner table on holidays with your parents or in-laws. 

But the best part about family is that it doesn’t have to fit into any box. God creates families out of all sorts of pieces. 

One of my best friends is walking through the foster care journey, and I see the way she loves without hesitation each and every time a child walks into her home. It reminds me of the way God looks at us every time we come home to him. 

“It takes a village,” people say when it comes to raising kids. 

That village might be made up of moms, dads, sisters or friends – but God has called each one to that village. And as the body of Christ, we make up a pretty big village.

God continues to remind me that while he loves me endlessly, he loves those around me and across the world too – even the ones who don’t look like me, agree with me or live the same life I do. 

Over and over again, he speaks this loving reminder to me to share his love and his light to all – without reserve, the same way I see my friend share God’s love and light to her foster children. 

While you might not be in the season of raising children, how can we choose to share God’s light within our village? How can we share that light beyond our village? 

In this time we’re living in, how can we continue to share the power of Christ and his great love with those who may not look like us, agree with us or choose to live the same way as us?

“In the same way, though there are many of us, we are one body in Christ, and individually we belong to each other.” -Romans 12:5

Written by Emily Ahrens, associate director of content development at Buckner International.