Aspiring to be a "Third Brother"

Unfortunately for me, I am the only boy in my family of origin (except for my Dad, of course). I have two wonderful, older sisters, but no brothers (even though I did have a foreign exchange student brother from Norway live with me for a year in 1971-72). Fortunately for me, God blessed Ellen and me with three sons (and a terrific daughter, too). Andy, Peter and Nathan have experienced all the beneficial aspects of "brotherhood," including the great time they had together this past weekend for Peter's bachelor party in advance of his marriage to Kristen on March 28th.

Brothers are something special. I've seen it in my son's lives. But, today I am aspiring to be a Third Brother. What is that you say? Let me explain.

One of the ways I keep up on current affairs is to read World magazine - my favorite! That every-other-week publication has several excellent writers. One of the best is Marvin Olasky. He usually has something really relevant and thought-provoking to say. His writing usually causes me to think extra hard from a Christian world view about what's really happening in the world around us. He really hit the nail on the head in the February 28, 2009 issue with his article entitled "Prodigal Sons." (See link below.)

http://www.worldmag.com/articles/15022

In this article he suggests that we should aspire to be a Third Brother, that is as opposed to the other two brothers in the biblical story Jesus told about the Prodigal Son.

I am commiting today to try to think/act/speak like a Third Brother should. In these confusing times when there is so much as Christians that we could react negatively to and/or get really angry/disheartened about, a Third Brother would take a different path than that and be more concerned about changing people's hearts, not necessarily their actions, their words, their politics, their religion, or their views.

Read the article yourself and then think about it. Do you aspire to be a Third Brother?