matthew 12... practice what you preach

as with all of matthew so far, there is so much in the chapter.  there is so much going on and so much that jumps out at me that i could ramble about.  but i guess out of all of them i'll look at Jesus' statement that,

v50 "... whoever does the will of My Father who is in heaven, he is My brother, and sister and mother."

it was just last chapter that he said you need to hate your family.  i feel like i can sometimes read those statements and separate Jesus from his family.  almost as though he didn't have one.  or he had one but they didn't matter to him because he was God.  but that does away with him being very much human.  and it does away with how important family was in that culture.  and it does away with the fact that Jesus told john to look out for his mom while he was on the cross.  Jesus did care about his family.  i wonder how hard it was to say something like that.  did he look them in the eye when he said it (sorta like peter and the rooster.)?  how bad did that sting mary?

he never said this life he's called us to is easy.  if anything, he guarantied it was going to be difficult.  and i can't think of anything more difficult than looking at your mom and saying she's not mom because she's not doing the will of God.

the other side of this is, this gives me a really cool and large family.  God, thanks for providing that.