Family

"Hansel & Gretel" has always been the strangest of the fairy tales I'm familiar with.  I'm not sure that I ever really understood the point of it.  Is there a lesson to be learned beyond "don't eat the gingerbread cottage you come across when wandering in the woods"?  And should we really be teaching our kids to push people into ovens?

The writers of Once Upon A Time maintained the creepy weird aspects of this particular story, but they also simplified the moral to one I deeply appreciate: Family will always find each other.  In the Enchanted Forest, Hansel & Gretel literally run into the Evil Queen as they search for their father (aided by a compass instead of breadcrumbs).  The Queen actually sends them to the cottage on a quest for something she needs (we find out later it's the poisoned apple for Snow White).  As a reward for their success, she offers them a home with her, but they refuse, choosing to continue the search for their father.  In her usual fashion, the Queen returns both the children and their father to the woods, but on opposite sides of the vast forest, doomed to search for each other forever.

In Storybrooke, Hansel & Gretel are motherless children whose only clue to their father's identity is a compass.  As Sheriff, Emma does some digging and finds him, but he's unwilling to take on the responsibility.  When Emma tries to take them to Boston (where the Mayor has arranged for their placement in separate children's homes), her car breaks down.  Luckily, the father is the town mechanic, and when he shows up to fix the car, he decides he might be willing to be a father after all.

I realize that in our world, many of my readers may have very negative experiences of family.  You might actually shudder at the idea of family always finding each other.  But the reality is that family connection doesn't have to be merely biological.  The Bible describes God as a father who adopts us as His children.  When we accept His gift of grace, we become part of a family that spreads around the globe and across the generations.  There is a spiritual connection that bonds us together more strongly than anything else.  In this family we can learn to trust each other, to work through conflict, to find encouragement and support... as long as we're seeking to be the family God created us to be.  Best of all, we have a perfect Father who loves us as we should be loved.  And this same Father will always search for us when we get ourselves lost.  Like Hansel & Gretel, we also get a compass-- the Holy Spirit-- to help guide us back to the Father.  As long as it's seeking (and God always is), this family will always find each other.