Ancestry

Pastor’s Epistle—August, A.D. 2014 A

The Story of Your Family

According to Think Like a Freak, the third book in the Freakonomics series, only 14% of U.S. adults in a recent poll could recall all Ten Commandments. 29% couldn’t name a single one. If that surprises you (or perhaps relieves you), it shouldn’t. People have a hard time remembering lists. They don’t mean much to us. But we love to remember stories.

Stories give life meaning. They motivate us, relieve depression, offer guidance, and increase learning. Each of us holds a worldview that is, in effect, our baseline story. Each of us remembers his or her life not as a random series of recollections but as a coherent tale that we can edit, re-read, and share. Recent studies have borne out the importance of having a family story; children who know the stories of their ancestors before them develop higher self-esteem and a greater sense of control over their lives.

Me, I’ve always been a story guy. You can tell by all the weird stuff in my office. Sure, there are those mounds of books that I keep accruing far faster than I can read them, in the hope beyond hope that someday—after my kids graduate? when I retire?—I’ll actually be able to get through them all. But then there are the bizarre knick-knacks, the swords and helmets and bottles and boxes and flags and replicas and various other things on my office shelves that my wife would prefer I not bring home to clutter up the house. Someone once asked the purpose of all these curios. “Everything I own tells a story,” I replied. “That, to me, has always been the greatest utility.” My old college roommate told me that might be the truest thing I’ve ever said.

Thanks to a Christmas gift subscription to Ancestry.com, I’ve recently been able to delve into my greater family history. One of my brothers has assembled a gargantuan 8,000-member family tree stretching back well over a thousand years. We’ve found farmers and explorers and lesser nobles and harsh kings and bloody conquerors. One of my tenth-great grandfathers founded New Jersey. (I’m so sorry.) George Clooney made a movie about my grandpa’s cousin. Shakespeare mentions an uncle. I’m descended from the Emperor Charlemagne, William the Conqueror, and weaselly Prince John of Robin Hood fame. We even found who looks to be the first Stout: Sigurd the Stout, a Viking conqueror of Scotland. And do you know what his father’s name was? Thorfinn Skullsplitter. That’s right. Before the family name was Stout, it was Skullsplitter.

Does this change who I am, to know that my Mother’s people fought George Washington as mercenaries, or that my Nth-great-grandfather was the king who executed Braveheart? I suppose it does. I have a greater story now, one that makes history and family and the world itself more exciting, more vivid, because I know how deeply entwined we all are within it. And I have such astounding tales to tell my son and daughters about their ancestors of old! History isn’t just stories anymore. It’s our stories.

That’s what the Bible is, too. It’s not just a series of tales about unrelated people from times long since passed. The Bible is the story of our people—all of our peoples. When we were adopted into the Body of Christ, we were adopted into the people of God. Abraham is our ancestor now. So are Moses and Samson and David and the Maccabees and Peter and Paul and the saints. The Bible is not a compilation of lists to learn about religion. The Bible is the love story between God and His people—between God and your family. Every story in it is your story, just as it was your parents’ story, and just as it shall be your children’s story. It’s not about facts and dates for rote memorization. That’s not the point. It’s about sharing all that God has done, is doing, and always will do for you. The promises He gives are for you, the salvation He offers is for you, and the love revealed therein is for you. Yes, you, specifically.

The Bible is the story of your family, of God our Father and of our brothers and sisters in Christ. Pick it up. Read it together. Claim it as your own. Wonder at what God has done for you and yours. And then pass the story on, as it has been passed on for thousands of years, from parent to child and family to family, all for the greater glory of God.

It truly is the Greatest Story Ever Told. And it’s all yours.