The Whole World is Our Family!

By Niggy Binkles

Delisa and Cheppy, two children, lived along with their parents in a tall apartment complex in a busy city. Their mother’s sister, Aunty Faura, lived in a flat in the same complex along her family—her three children, her husband (Uncle Fero) and two dogs. 

One day, Cheppy went across to Aunty Faura’s house to give her a greeting card as it was her birthday. Aunty Faura made Cheppy sit in a comfortable chair, gave her hot chocolate to drink and some biscuits and then went back to being busy on her phone, furiously tapping away at it and laughing or frowning every time she received a message, which announced its arrival with a loud ‘ping’.

Cheppy thought it wasn’t at all good manners on Aunty Faura’s part to be so very busy with her phone as to not speak with her—after all, one must give due attention to one’s guests. But she kept this thought to herself.

After what seemed like half an hour, Aunty Faura looked up and said, “Oh, I’m so sorry, Cheppy dear, I’ve been ignoring you. We now have a family WhatsApp group—me, the kids and your Uncle Fero—and I was forwarding them some funny messages that I received this morning. I also had to send them instructions for the day. This WhatsApp group is a great way for us to connect as a family. And, it keeps me so, so busy!”

"Oh that’s okay, Aunty," Cheppy said half-heartedly. She thought it was better to leave. Thanking Aunty Faura, she headed out of Aunty Faura’s house. When she got back home, she told Delisa how Aunty Faura had been so very busy with her phone that she had almost completely ignored her. She also felt sad that Aunty Faura had not included her and Delisa and their mother (who was Aunty Faura’s sister) in her family WhatsApp group. Wouldn’t she have had done so had she really considered them to be part of her family?

Now, Delisa was a girl with a mind of her own, who didn’t always think like others wanted her to. “Aunty Faura might regard herself, her two kids and her husband—a small group of just four people—as her family,” she said to Cheppy, “but you know what? The entire world is our family! Every single bird, animal, plant, tree, human being and even things like rivers and rocks in the whole wide world is part of our immensely huge family, which also happens to be the biggest family ever!”

“Really?”, Cheppy asked in amazement. “How do you say that?”

“Let me tell you how,” Delisa said with authority. She explained that she had recently read a book that said that all the many different things and beings in the universe (which was so vast as to be infinite) were actually all members of one family, the family of God, Who had brought them all into being. Since the Maker of all things and beings was the One God, all things and beings were members of a single family, the family of God. It was as simple as that. This meant, Delisa went on, that a ‘stray’ cat or a pet dog or a giant shark in the sea, a cloud floating in the sky, a little bush or a big tree, a ‘stranger’ on the street or someone living on the other side of Planet Earth were all part of one big family, all of them being ‘children’ of the One Divine Parent—God.

“Oh my! That sounds like so much fun! If every being and thing in the world is a member of our family, we can then love everyone!” exclaimed Cheppy.

“Yes, yes, that’s true!” Delisa said in delight. “Now let’s have the cake that Mummy has made today and then step out into the garden and share cake-crumbs with our brothers the birds and hug a few sister-trees and maybe spot some aunty beetles and uncle flies and say ‘Hello’ to them!”

“Wuppy! That sounds like a great idea!” said Cheppy as she rushed into the pantry to fetch the cake for herself and her sister.