Our daughter Hanna, her husband Kyle and their three kids invited us to go with them this past week to Palm Springs. They were given a free week here so they rented a big van and we drove down with them, and are headed back home tomorrow. Kyle and I golfed, we all went to Sea World and got soaked at the dolphin show, road up this giant tram, and spent many hours in the swimming pool and hot tub. One of the golf courses was the most beautifully landscaped golf course I have ever seen. Lots of water with waterfalls, plants, flowers, trees, and sand, lots of sand. Many of the greens were islands with a bridge to it. Needless to say I lost a lot of balls in the water. It was a lot of fun to play, and because of the reduced tourist attendance there weren’t a lot of people.

I would have just as soon stayed home and painted my boat as to spend hours driving and all the time on the various activities that we did here, even with the gorgeous weather. But what made it special and very worthwhile was the time we got to spend with Kyle, Hanna and three awesome grandkids.

Healthy relationships that are abounding in love take work to establish and maintain, but they are the most significant source of joy in all of life. God is a Trinity of personalities and we are created in His image, we were created for loving community and family.

There are several key principles that get violated by so many families; first and most important is to forgive one another quickly of anything. That is absolutely the most critical of all principles. God blesses families and fills them with joy, but families with bitterness in them forfeit all of God’s blessings. The second principle is to always talk graciously to each other, always, always. The third principle is to always be thinking about how you could improve as a husband, a wife, a son, a sibling. We naturally think critically of our mate and others in the family on how they could improve, what they could do and ought to do. But instead, do what Jesus said to do, “take the log out of your own eye before attempting to take the splitter out of your husband’s eye.”

In our culture today “blaming and shaming” is what most do when relationships get strained. That is the guaranteed way to destroy your relationships with your own selfishness.