by Linda Macqueen, editor of The Lutheran

Metal arms fly into the air and red lights flash: ‘Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!’ Sometimes I wish I had my own personal Lost in Space robot. (Did he ever have a name? I don’t think so; I think he was just Robot.)
‘Warning, warning! Intruder alert! Intruder alert!’

Wouldn’t it be good if Robot would warn you whenever an uninvited, unwanted person was approaching your front door or, more likely, dialling your phone number from a call centre in some faraway land. Or just last night, for instance, it would have been handy to have Robot warn me: ‘Danger! Danger, Linda Macqueen! Census collector approaching!’ Then I might not have dived under the lounge cushions when I heard shuffling sounds outside my door and the thump of a heavy object.

(It was probably just the collector dropping his soggy umbrella, but it could have been a metal bar or a baseball bat, couldn’t it?)

Intruders. We don’t like them. They disturb us and disrupt things. They make us nervous —or just plain irritated: ‘Leave me alone, I don’t want to talk to you, you’re invading my personal space. My evening/party/work-team/social-group/family is just fine without you, so go away.’

So imagine being a child in a blended family, trying to live with intruders in your own home — an intruder woman where your mum used to be, an intruder man where your dad used to be, intruder step-brothers and sisters whom you’re told to be nice to, even though they’re totally obnoxious. Your Intruder Alert robot would be waving his arms and flashing red lights 24/7, overheating and blowing fuses.

You wonder how blended families ever manage to make it work. It’s a credit to all the mums and dads and kids who achieve something close to normalcy and sanity — because it doesn’t happen without enormous quantities of hard work.

The stories about blended families in this edition of The Lutheran remind me of congregations. None of us gets to choose the members of our congregations, those people God has chosen to be our church family. Sometimes those people can drive our Intruder Alert robot into meltdown: ‘Go away! Leave me alone! I have everything under control. Your ideas are stupid. I don’t need you or want you in my pew/project/committee/home-group ...’

But instead of an Intruder Alert robot maybe we’d all be better off with an Opportunity Alert robot. That’s the one that flashes green lights whenever there is an opportunity to engage in patience, perseverance, forgiveness, kindness, gentleness and all the other things required to live with Christlikeness in our congregation — our very own blended family.