God used a powerful image in comparison between Himself and a woman with a new -born baby. It’s an appealing image, for it is universally understood, and lets us have an inkling to the bond that God seeks with us: Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. (Isaiah 49:15-16) The image is one of profound intimacy, of a deep and life-long bond; and then He acknowledges that among humans not every such bond is lasting, but that in Him it lasts for eternity. It is a oneness between Him and human beings.

I have identical twin nephews named Charlie and Toby. One day Toby was walking downtown on the sidewalk when he heard someone yell from a car, “Charlie!, Toby,! Charlie! Toby! Whoever you are!, Hi!” It was a friend from college who, like many of their friends, couldn’t tell the twins apart. While they looked almost exactly alike, they differed in their interests and activities, and even lifestyles, but to this day the two of them share a deep and irrefutable bond.

Just before his crucifixion, Jesus called his disciples “friends” (John 15:15), but after his resurrection he told Mary Magdalene to tell his “brothers” that she had seen him alive: Go to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God” (John 20:17).

The brotherhood that Jesus created with his disciples is no ordinary brotherhood., It’s more like a twinship between Jesus and each of the eleven and ultimately between Jesus and every one of his followers: I pray also for those who will believe in me through their massage, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me, and I am in you. May they also be in us . . . (John 17:20)

This oneness is essential to Jesus, and the eleven of his twelve disciples entered it. It’s the oneness that Jesus seeks with everyone, for it comes from the heart of his Father. It’s the love that Jesus had for his people: Righteous Father, . . . I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that I myself may be in them. (John 17:25-26) Being one with Christ makes us all brothers and sisters.

Love in Him,

Prue