A BIT OF SUMMER AND THOUGHTS ON ANCESTORS

Do you like the picture of the roses? I may have posted this before, but I thought that those who follow my posts would appreciate a bit of summer right here in the middle of January--especially if you're living in a climate like I do. Today it is quite cold, windy, and snowy outside. We got a good bit of snow last night and today it's blowing around. The sun is shining here and there this afternoon, so that helps, but I thought this picture might bring a bit of sunshine in your day as well! It's a little hope that summer will eventually come!

I know that I told you that we've been searching family history. My daughter is getting really good at learning how to find information that we're interested in. As I was doing my daily Bible reading this morning, a new appreciation for family history was impressed upon me.

If we would be honest, we would all admit to the temptation to skip the long lists of "begats" that we occasionally find in scripture. I ran onto one this morning in the third chapter of Luke. My first thought was that I had read this many times before and I could just skip to the next chapter. Then I suddenly realized how we've been searching so diligently for our ancestor's names and this list of names was a very unique list that I needed to spend time reading. Each of the people listed were a link to someone else in Jesus' family. Each name that my daughter and I find puts another piece in the puzzle of family history and is precious to us. After all, though they might be someone we never knew, they were real people, loved by God. People who had hopes, dreams, legacies, and eternal destinies. In fact, we're beginning to learn that every name, even if we thought it might not be a direct link in our family line, is important. A couple of times we've found our most important information by investigating the records of names we thought were unimportant to our search!

This reminds me of how each person is precious to God. As people, we may overlook others and have a tendency to dismiss some acquaintances as unimportant, but God looks at each of us as His special creation, a person with a soul, an individual that He desires to know Him and spend eternity with Him. I guess looking at these family histories has caused me to ponder those things and wonder what others were like who preceded us. It reminds me that you are quickly forgotten after just a few short years unless someone is diligent to remember you or you happened to be famous for something. It's a sobering thought that should remind us of our own frailty and the fact that we will face our Creator in a relatively short amount of time--most lives are 70-80 years or so.

So today when I ran onto that Bible list, I read it with new respect. Each name is important, even if I didn't know them personally. Those lists are there for a reason, as is all of scripture. Searching family history made me realize that today! Blessings, LORI