蜜芽传媒

Good morning. About 20 years ago two newly born babies, both with jaundice, were put in an incubator. When the babies were handed back to their mothers they queried if they had been given the right child but told not to worry did not pursue the matter. About 10 years ago, the doubts having grown, one of the families underwent DNA testing and found that the girl who had grown up with them was not in fact biologically theirs. This week the case was finally resolved when the clinic was fined a large sum of money for negligence. The distress of the two families has been great, but one mother said after the trial that nothing would separate her from the girl she had brought up. 鈥淲e were so afraid to lose one another that we realised how much love we have for each other.鈥� She said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 need the same blood to feel part of the same family鈥�.鈥�

It is I think a powerful message at a time when families come in so many different shapes and sizes. There are not only devoted foster parents and adoptive parents, but families or relationships in which at least one of the parents will not be biologically related to the children they are bringing up. Then there are children born as a result of sperm or egg donation. I am sure they would all agree with the mother in the case: it is the quality of the relationship that counts. In the past children born into the more affluent classes will so often have owed their psychological health to wet nurses and nannies, not detached socialite parents; and at a time when so many mothers died young the children would have been brought up by step mothers or aunts. Of course it is nice if parents can say about their child that they have their father鈥檚 nose or their mother鈥檚 eye colour, but in end what matters is a warm and caring relationship

Once when Jesus was teaching he was told that his mother and brothers were outside asking for him. He asked 鈥淲ho are my mother and brothers?鈥� and looking around at the crowd immediately answered his own question by saying 鈥淲hoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother鈥�. That may seem a bit hard on his biological mother but we see his point when later as he was dying on the cross he looked down and saw his mother and the one described as the disciple he loved and said to his mother 鈥� Mother, there is your son鈥� and to the disciple 鈥淭here is your mother鈥�. The writer then records that the disciple took her into his own home. It was the start of a new community- the new community he came to bring into being: one rooted in care for one another whether or not we belong to the same biological family.