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Hello and welcome to giveattentiontoreading.com, where you can get your daily dose of the Great Physician’s medicine. Today’s reading comes from Acts chapters 17 and 18. I’d like to give attention to Acts 17:26.

And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place…

This passage tells me that the concept of the family of man is not just some liberal, whackjob idea; it’s a biblical concept. We’re all a part of that same family. In fact, you and I have the exact same ancestry from Adam to Noah. 

What this means is we need to treat one another like it. Let me see if I can illustrate what I’m talking about by telling you about something that happened to me the other day in a McDonald’s drive-thru line.

I was at one of those McDonald’s drive-thrus where the line splits into two different places to take an order. The guy who pulled in behind me passed me, and I didn’t really think anything about it until I moved up a few spaces and there he was in that second line. Instead of getting in the single file line like the rest of us and splitting there at the last second, he went up and got in that second line ahead of all of us who had been waiting.

I was ticked. I was livid. I was calling him names. I was saying things about him. Until he rolled down his window, stuck his head out, and it was a friend of mine. All of a sudden, my thoughts completely changed. I took back all the things I said about him, the names I called him, the things I said about his mom. Why? Because I knew him. Now, did the fact that I knew him change that what he did was, well, something that he shouldn’t have done? Of course not. But it changed the way I viewed him. Before I knew who it was, I thought the worst of him. Once I recognized there was a connection, then I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

That’s what I’m talking about with this “family of man” concept. I need to recognize that I’m connected to all these folks around me. That lady at the checkout counter who’s taking her sweet time, calling the manager over, and wasting my time…she’s part of the family. The person who cuts you off in traffic because things are rush…he’s part of the family. Whoever it is that you’re working with who’s dropping the ball on that project…part of the family.

Now this doesn’t mean we ignore when folks do things wrong. But it does mean that we treat them just a little bit differently. We remember the connection. We remember that we make mistakes and how we want them to treat us. We want them to remember the connection. We need to treat others like family and keep in mind what it went on to say in Acts 17:27 as it pointed out that God had granted those boundaries of dwelling so…

…that they should seek God, in the hope that they might feel their way toward him and find him.

We need to remember to give that benefit of the doubt and treat others like our family of man so that we might be able to bring them in to the family of God. 

So, today, you and I need to treat each other and the folks we come in contact with like one big happy human family.

Thanks again for checking out giveattentiontoreading.com. I’d love to know what you thought about today’s post or what else you got out of today’s reading. So feel free to drop down to the comments section and join in the discussion. And don’t forget to come back tomorrow for another dose of the Great Physician’s medicine.