{"id":4918,"date":"2025-09-29T08:54:32","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:54:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4918"},"modified":"2025-09-29T08:54:32","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T12:54:32","slug":"true-colors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2025\/09\/29\/true-colors\/","title":{"rendered":"True Colors"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0<\/em>click here<\/a>

It seemed like a great idea.

More than 30 years ago, our small group, which was comprised of six married couples, decided to take a break from our customary Bible study and play a game.

It was True Colors, a Milton Bradley party game that had just hit the market. The accompanying booklet noted, \u201cTrue Colors is the perfect way to find out what your friends really think about you!\u201d It promised to be an interesting exercise in social self-awareness, appropriately punctuated by laughter and ah-ha\u2019s.

For me, it turned out to be an experience that I still remember three decades later.

The game is simple. Someone draws one of what Milton Bradley describes as \u201c170 hilarious questions.\u201d

For instance: \u201cWho has the most money on them right now?\u201d<\/em> Everybody casts two secret votes, writing down the names of two people in the room. Then comes a guessing game \u2013 who do you think got the most votes, a few votes, or perhaps no votes at all? The truth comes out when the votes are tallied. \u00a0

Sample questions include:

Who is the last person to leave the party?<\/em>
Who would be the worst business partner?<\/em>
Who is the dorkiest?<\/em>
Who is the coolest?<\/em>
Who can sing the best?<\/em>
Whom do you not<\/u> want to cook dinner tonight?<\/em>

We gave ourselves permission as a group to pass on questions like, \u201cWho is the drunkest right now?\u201d

About halfway through the game, this question came up: \u201cWho would you like to be your brother or sister?\u201d Everybody voted. We made our guesses. We checked the tallies. Everybody got at least one vote.

Except for me. I got none.\u00a0

If the question had been different \u2013 such as \u201cWho would you call if you were playing Who Wants to Be a Millionaire<\/em> and you could phone one friend?\u201d or \u201cWho would you ask to help you understand John Calvin\u2019s perspectives on limited atonement?\u201d \u2013 I knew I would have gotten a few votes.

But nobody wanted to be my brother or sister.<\/em>

Even Mary Sue didn\u2019t vote for me \u2013 although, when I thought about it, that would have been a little creepy.

The rest of the group was compassionate. This was the moment when we began to suspect that maybe True Colors wasn\u2019t the team-building, friendship-fostering, love-generating experience we thought it might be.

\u201cIt\u2019s no big deal,\u201d I assured everybody. Except, to tell the truth, it felt like it was at least a little<\/em> deal.

In the years since that gathering, when group members email me, they occasionally add a P.S.: \u201cI really would like you to be my brother!\u201d That\u2019s been sweet. It\u2019s amazing how that one question has sustained so much conversation.

It\u2019s interesting, but no one in the room at that time (including me) thought to say something like, \u201cThe good news is that all of us are brothers and sisters anyways.\u201d

That\u2019s one of the awesome perks of following Christ. When you throw in your lot with Jesus, you get a new family, too.

Pet adoption agencies proclaim the joy of helping dogs and cats find their \u201cforever families.\u201d In the case of Christians, that\u2019s literally true. We\u2019re adopted by grace into a new kind of community \u2013 one that will become infinitely richer when we experience the healing and wholeness promised in the next world.

During Bible times, families were regarded as almost sacred relational webs. No one seriously questioned that loyalty to parents, grandparents, siblings, and children came before almost everything else.

That\u2019s why Jesus\u2019 remark about the identity of his own family is so shocking.

When someone in the crowd informs Jesus that his mother and brothers are looking for him, he can do what a \u201cvirtuous person\u201d would surely do \u2013 excuse himself to see if there is an important matter to which he must attend.

Instead, he stretches out his hand toward his disciples and says, \u201cHere are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother\u201d (Matthew 12:48-50).

In the minds of many listeners, this would have sounded like social anarchy \u2013 and a violation of the commandment to honor one\u2019s father and mother to boot.

But Jesus is casting a revolutionary vision for a new kind of family \u2013 a set of loyalties and responsibilities that supersede even those connected with our chromosomes.

To top it off, we find this statement in Hebrews 2:11:

\u201cBoth the one who makes people holy\u00a0and those who are made holy\u00a0are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters.\u201d

That can only mean one thing, you know.

I\u2019m willing to play True Colors with Jesus any time, anywhere.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here It seemed like a great idea. More than 30 years ago, our small group, which was comprised of six married couples, decided to take a break from our customary Bible study and play a game. It was True Colors, a Milton Bradley party game that had just hit the market. The… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4919,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1009],"class_list":["post-4918","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4918"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4920,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4918\/revisions\/4920"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4918"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4918"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4918"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}