God was so wise to invent the family. Next to knowing Him through Jesus Christ, family is the best. This summer as our family goes off in a million different directions all at once ('tis the season for such habits of growing children), I realize afresh how much they mean to me.

On Tuesday night one of our Elders led the prayer at our meeting and we focused on praying for dad's at Southgate. It was a sweet time together led by a guy who has never recovered from his father's love and mentoring. He'd give anything to talk to him again, but what is left are good memories and enacting disciplines that he would approve and that honor him. It was a prayer meeting about family. He read a neat poem about fatherhood and its privilege to end.

We have a bad habit of getting it backwards and wrong. We display the important things and exalt the passing of items of no consequence. Yes, big money does not matter, nor can it buy what is most important. The love of family. A faithful wife has value far above rubies. Kids going forward in maturity and godly aspiration are the joy of life (3 John 4).

There is nothing like saying good bye as the family team disperses to the ends of the earth before reconstitution in a few weeks to bring you afresh to what God knows all along and wants to keep on the forefront of our thinking and living. Family is one of life's great treasures and great investments.

Faithful affection and persevering forgiving love all pave the way for accrued interest that comes home in windfalls as you get a little older. We've all heard of the power of positive interest financially. Well there is another inexorable benefit to the law of sowing and reaping related to the family. The more you put in, the more you get out. The more selfless you are with each other, the more you grow in the benefit of relating. You get a family all working to bring joy to each other in affection and you have a tsunami of a tide of blessing the rolls in and keeps coming.

It is worth it! Stay at it! Give yourself to God's way of life and let Him build the house (Psalm 127:1). He is so good at it. And as He builds, it makes those Home and Garden Channel homes seems like shacks, shells where the dead walk around but do not like each other. Oh the fat on the edges of family life which brings great joy!

We need to keep the first and second things first and second. Pursue Christ! Pursue our families! Enjoy the spoils. God's way is best.