Live Your Genealogy Well

“When Reu had lived 32 years, he became the father of Serug. And after he became the father of Serug, Reu lived 207 years and had other sons and daughters. When Serug had lived 30years, he became the father of Nahor. And after he became the father of Nahor, Serug lived 200 years and had other sons and daughters.” Genesis 11:20-23 (NKJV)

I bet you didn’t memorize these verses in Sunday School when you were growing up. If you’re like me, your eyes glazed over as you stumbled through them to finish your Read Through The Bible in a Year plan. Maybe you think of Ancestry.com commercials you’ve seen and wonder about your own lineage. Did the line of your nose come from a distant descendant from a foreign country? Was your outlook on life shaped little by little as it filtered down from a culture you’ve never directly experienced? And the most weighty question: what legacy am I crafting for the generations who follow?

If each word of the Bible is truly God-breathed and useful in our lives, genealogies must have precious gems of truth hidden in them. I think one of those gems is a perspective bigger than ourselves. The genealogies are a tool God uses to give us an eagle-eye view of his work and our place in it.

I’ve watched Francis Chan illustrate this idea with a long piece of rope. The rope represents eternity and has a very small section covered with red tape. The red part is our human life and is tiny compared to the rest. God’s plan for the world began long, long before my one life existed on the rope. His plan will continue for a very long time after my life is over. The rope shows the juxtaposition of the smallness and largeness of my life. God’s plan is monumentally bigger than my little part and yet he gives my little part massive importance.

Four Ways to Live Your Genealogy Well

1. Take a deep breath and give yourself a break. Your best effort will always be good enough to accomplish God’s plan for your life today. His good plans won’t be thwarted because a migraine derailed your day or a poor SAT score limited your college choices. His power is big, so big that he is able to pull beauty from the ashes of your utter failure and dark sin. Strive to follow him. Be the best you can be. Then take a deep breath and trust him with your humanness.
2. Don’t get cocky. Every moment of every day God is wielding the same power he used to create the world and raise Jesus from the dead to accomplish his grand plan. Your most brilliant days are merely a drop holding a tiny reflection of his work. Our response to a big win must be gratitude for the Holy Spirit’s power working through us. Did you hold your tongue or speak words of wisdom? Thank the Lord for his power. Did you raise a great kid? Thank the Lord for doing work only he can accomplish. Have you remained faithful to God over many years? Thank the Lord for the will to obey. None of this is you. Our best moments are all him.
3. Be gracious to the generations who came before. Great-great grandma Minnie may have a reputation for having been a hard woman. The black and white pictures don’t show her sporting any smiles. You can blindly blame her for passing down your current struggles to maintain a cheerful outlook or you can choose a soft backward gaze. Maybe she was doing the best she could with a life that was monumentally more difficult than the black and whites let on. Maybe she worked hard and offered her family line more than the generation before her. Maybe she wished to be so much more and begged God to make use of the little she had to offer. Maybe see the life you lived.
4. Understand the power your life holds. The ripples your life creates keep traveling long after your life ends. Generations to come will feel their lives rise and fall as the wave of your life passes through theirs. Your name will be long forgotten but your life will still carry a power unseen by anyone but God. I imagine precious people of mine being slightly more steady on their feet when a challenge comes because of the legacy I embedded into their great grandmother’s gut. This vision challenges me to open my eyes with purpose each morning. I hope all these ripples and connections will become visible in heaven. Wouldn’t it be fun to follow our legacy both backward and forward and understand it all?

Each of us carries a great responsibility to play our part in our own genealogy well. God’s words in Deuteronomy 5 remind us he is gracious to us in the midst of this weighty task. “For I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me,  but showing mercy to thousands (emphasis mine), to those who love Me and keep My commandments.”

The natural course of life will undoubtedly cause our descendants to bear the consequences of our sin. The real story of our legacy will be in the power God uses to magnify the effects of our obedience far beyond the scope of natural cause and effect. Our small obedience in our small life can send ripples of mercy for thousands of our descendants. Obedience plus God’s mercy turns a genealogy into a legacy.

Dear Father, thank for giving me a place in your story and in my family tree. Help me to take it seriously while giving myself grace to grow. I trust you with my legacy and ask you to use my life for your glory. Amen.

Scripture for Reflection

“Remember the days of old; consider the years of many generations; ask your father, and he will show you, your elders, and they will tell you.” Deuteronomy 32:7 (ESV)

Reach for More

Take a walk today and give your mind permission to wander the pathways of your genealogy. Take a soft look backwards and thank God for what you see that has been handed down. Now dream a little. Imagine you family four generations from now when no one alive remembers the sound of your voice. What legacy would you like them to have because of their connection to you – a set of the jaw, firm handshake, or way of thinking about God? Today is the day you build those things so firmly into your life that they ripple out into the future.

Lori Florida lives a life that is all about her people. She’s convinced that being Mrs. to one and Mommy to eight will be her most significant way to serve Jesus. She wants to use her life to cheer on and coach the women around her. She is on staff with Project Hopeful working to give a hand up to moms in poverty in Ethiopia. You can find her at loriflorida.com.

Photograph © Igor Ovsyannykov, used with permission