And yet, and yet…

So what’s your family background?

I always think it’s interesting when I see people doing the DNA and genealogy trees to discern aspects about their personalities today. It’s usually like 23% French, 14% Swedish, 3% etc. The funniest part is when people get thrown for a loop by some small percentage of who they are related to.

I personally recently got connected with a fifth cousin who revealed that a whole branch of my family actually settled like 10 miles away from us now and I had no idea. Like 150 years ago the family parted ways, and my (multiple) great grandfather Myles went to Arkansas, and his brother Absalom settled near Killeen, Texas. Like I said, interesting!

But why do we spend so much time, energy, and sometimes money to discover our genealogy? What does it matter if we are related to royalty, or that we came from a cultural background that we’ve had no prior connection to?

This is not just a modern thing. I love reading in Scripture the genealogy section, with dozens of begats and fun names. (How else would we know about Heman, Nimrod, and Maher-shalel-hash-bazz?) These are sections that the casual reader usually skips, but they appear in many different places in Scripture. What is their importance?

One thing that was understood in Scripture was generational impact. Consider Exodus 34:6-7, “⁶ The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, ⁷ keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.” Knowing the stories and character of those who went before can help us to learn some of our foundations today.

But beyond that, genealogies were designed to show faithfulness that goes beyond our consideration. When we see the incredible ways that the Lord preserved his people through the milennia to bring forth his promises, when we see the people whose sin he redeemed leading in the line to the Messiah, when we know those names and characters that laid the foundations, it gives us hope for that which is to come. Why should the Lord who has been faithful for the thousands of years not be faithful in our days now?

So when you look back into the halls of your generations, take time to consider how Jesus will preserve your future. Consider that the wickedness of past generations passes quickly, but the quality of character of righteousness echoes long beyond us.

Everybody’s from somewhere.

Signs and wonders, y’all.

The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1