“A voice of one calling in the wilderness, ‘Prepare the way for the Lord, make straight paths for Him.” Luke 3:4

Our immediate family is rather big. With 19 of us, all busy and running in different directions, it isn’t often we can all get together. Some old family friends were in town visiting, and I thought it’d be great to put out an invitation for everyone to come together on Sunday afternoon…if it was convenient. Sometime around midnight on Saturday, my oldest daughter fired a flare!

Flare guns are meant to pinpoint a location where a possible emergency exists. Having all gotten together at Christmas 2 months ago, each family had to weigh out the importance of what they had planned against the invitation to get together as a family. It wasn’t actually critical to be there…until we all saw the flare!

I’m writing this AFTER the get together to say that we had a BLAST! And yes…everyone came! As the subject of the coercive flame shot came up, we all laughed and gave our own side of what happened. My daughter took it all in stride, while sitting there with a smile on her face. She ended the conversation with…”but you’re all here aren’t you?” She had made her point!

There was a time in History when God fired a flare! After centuries of invitations, calls, cajoling, guilt and even threats of persecution, God’s last ditch effort to get the attention of His Family was to fire a flare. His name was John the Baptist! And man…did HE ever get attention!? But toward the end, it wasn’t the kind of attention he was looking for. It cost him his head!

Sin and its independent lifestyle had taken everyone’s eyes off Father God. In fact, the religious leaders were so off base, they invented rules to secure that their lifestyles would remain. That is…until the flare! Suddenly, being part of God’s REAL family made all the sense in the world! And to the chagrin of those with other plans, God’s family came together to form ‘The Church!’

I am pleased and proud that there was a 100% response rate to the flare from my daughter. No one questioned WHY she fired it. THAT was not what was important! Just like God’s flare that He continues to fire in these crazy mixed up days, the only importance was the response of The Family. In all our time together, she has never fired that flare even once. Until now! And I’m glad she did. It gave us a chance to verify just how important we are to each other!

How are YOU responding to God’s signals?