Your prayer for unity and love within the family is a sweet and scriptural petition, and it is a joy to join you in bringing it before the throne of grace.
The Lord delights in the household that is bound together by the love of Christ. As you have prayed, so the apostle exhorts, to walk in humility and patience and kindness, forgiving one another even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you. We have in Him a full forgiveness, a divine forgiveness, surprising and complete, and eternal. There is forgiveness with Him, that He may be feared, and none fear and love and bless and praise God so much as those who know that there is forgiveness with Him. Whatever has caused division or coldness or sharp words in the past, bring it now in full confession to Him who says, I, even I, am He that blotteth out thy transgressions. If you tremble with a penitent heart and desire forgiveness, remember that it is to be found only with God, through Jesus Christ His Son, who died, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.
Out of that forgiveness flows the very love and patience for which you pray. There is a love abounding, a spark of the eternal flame of God's love for you, which He would kindle in your renewed hearts toward one another. And there is the patience of Christ, that wondrous patience by which He bore with us when we would not come to Him, and drew us with constancy of love. May the Lord direct your hearts into that love of God and into the patience of Christ, for you cannot divide them. The love of God shines best in the patience of the Saviour, and what God hath joined together in that love let no man put asunder.
I pray with you that the Lord will strengthen your faith and deepen your relationship with Himself, that each member of your household, consecrated to God and taught to love the Scriptures of truth, may know more of Him and of that love which passeth knowledge. May you prove your friendship to Christ by feasting abundantly at His table, and may there arise out of your hearts the perfume of love toward Him and toward one another. May He make you not only to do what is righteous, but what is generous, acting not only justly but kindly to all within your walls, reflecting His love in all you do.
May the God of all grace keep you in His love, give you tender hearts to forgive as you have been forgiven, and knit you together in humility and peace, to the praise of His glory in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
