Greetings and welcome to the beginning of another year.

A big THANK YOU goes out to all of you for your prayers for Papa’s Pipeline, the entire Meyer family and even the future of this newsletter, The Purple Paper. I have been contemplating what family is all about and what role I play in it. I hope you will do some thinking about this as well.

Family! A simple word yet it encompasses such phenominal complexities. If family were nothing more than a small group of people who shared a commlon last name and certain genetic characteristics so they looked like each other, then why bother you with this. Well, this is a very simplistic view of family that even our rabbits in our back yard share. Out of seven rabbits, we have one that is blood related to the other six. This being the case, they all have certain similar characteristics, two long ears, cute noses, short fluffy tails and they each have four rabbits feet.

But when you stop to think about families and even the larger family of God, things start to take on new colors and textures. As the family of God, we do not all share a common last name, but we all have a common Father. We all have differing gifts and abilities, but we all draw our strength from a common source. We display such a wide variety of shapes and sizes and colors that the only commonality we share is that we are all sinners and fall short of God’s perfect standard. The only way we look alike is when we are covered by the blood of Jesus, then we all look like God’s children, forgiven.

Over the last year our family, the Meyer family has seen a whole lot of changes in our numbers. We lost one, Jerry, but it not only effected Pat, Mark and Tim Meyer but, Kathleen Meyer Lanford as well. This last one brings in the entire Lanford clan. Most of you know that Jerry Meyer was first married to Joyce Kraft Meyer and after her death he married Pat Nadeau Meyer. So now we have the Meyer clan, the Kraft clan, the Nadeau clan and the Lanford clan.

Mark Meyer married Beth Meador and Tim Meyer married Debbie Irvine. Do you see how things just start to snowball. This was demonstrated so clearly at our church’s Christmas Eve candlelight service. It all started with on candle lighting another, then those two lit four others then eight others and so on and on.

Not one of us will live or die alone without leaving a legacy behind. Be it for good or ill we cannot leave this planet without leaving a mark of some kind. As it relates to families, here is something to ponder. I once read this quote, the author is unknown to me, “Your children are the gifts you give to a future you will never see.”

Stop and let that sink in for a moment. Why then is it so important to raise up Godly families today? As we can all agree, raising a family today is hard. It may not be any harder than it was on our parents, but I believe it has so many new challenges and it seem the pace of life is so much faster that as parents we are faced with myriad life and death decisions that need responses NOW! That being the case, we need to keep our focus on our primary functions as long as we have breath. Serving our God and Savior and adding to His family as many as we can. Secondly, raising our families to the glory of God so the future will open the gifts we are giving it, Godly children to carry on our legacy.

Your fellow servant in HIS service, Tim Meyer papaspipeline@gmail.com