It was the fall of ’79.  Those fabled, Stargellian Pirates sailed past Montreal, Cincinnati and Baltimore to capture their fifth World Series crown.  Remember the Bucs’ signature song?  #1 on the R&B charts, it was Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family,” appealing to “my brothers, my sisters and me” to “get up, everybody, and sing.”

Getting the whole gang together has become nearly impossible.  The family table has skidded from “endangered species” to “extinct.”  It struggles to resurface on certain holidays, but political correctness has laid so many verbal land mines which can clear-cut whole forests of family trees.

What about saying grace?  Whatever happened to “the family that prays together?”  Will mentioning “our Father” offend or step on someone’s “rights?”

When Jesus summarized His Father’s message to us in a single sentence, did He intend for our relatives to be among those “neighbors” whom we’re to love?  That stripe of love is patient, kind, humble, generous, content, non-judgmental.  You know, all the things that you and I by nature are not.  But Jesus is.

Next time you take a seat at your family table, will you recall how much God loves you, then tell your face to reflect that love when you say, “Please pass the gravy?”

“I may have all knowledge and understand all secrets; I may have all the faith needed to move mountains – but if I have no love, I am nothing.”  1 Corinthians 13:2-3