This family photo (taken at my niece Julia’s wedding) was the last one of our “Nyman 9.” Shortly after that our children began marrying, and before we knew it, grandchildren were making their debuts. Today we are 15 and counting, but isn’t that the way families grow?

Often I think of God as my heavenly Father. According to Scripture, Israel was his bride, and his Son Jesus opens the way for the rest of us to gain sibling status when we believe he is who he says he is. That makes God the Father of millions, if not billions of children, and his family continues to grow.

Bill Gaither wrote a song about the delight of being included in God’s growing crowd of relatives. One of the verses goes like this:

From the door of an orphanage to the house of the King,
No longer an outcast, a new song I sing;
From rags unto riches, from the weak to the strong,
I’m not worthy to be here, but praise God I belong!

The wonder of those words is that God gives us a way to belong. He certainly never had a need for us, and our thanks for being given life was to cause him unbounded trouble, disappointing him repeatedly through thousands of years that include even today. Yet the limitless love he has for us, a complete mystery, motivated him to go all out. The only born-one to God, Jesus Christ, surrendered his life, and God the Father agreed to this mind-boggling idea.

The Message puts it beautifully in Ephesians 1:2-4:

“How blessed is God! And what a blessing he is! He’s the Father of our Master, Jesus Christ, and takes us to the high places of blessing in him. Long before he laid down earth’s foundations, he had us in mind, had settled on us as the focus of his love, to be made whole and holy by his love. Long, long ago he decided to adopt us into his family through Jesus Christ. (What pleasure he took in planning this!) He wanted us to enter into the celebration of his lavish gift-giving by the hand of his beloved Son.”

I couldn’t have said it any better. And I can’t wait to be in the family photograph.