If you have on your hands a pedigree, then ancestry
is an important and major issue. If you
have on your hands a mixed breed, a stray with little emphasis on purity of
line, then ancestry is much less important.
As a kid, I knew my grandmother, and had some sense of her parents and
siblings, but for the most part that was the extent of my interest in a family tree. Ancestry was seldom an issue of discussion in
our home. The characters in the Bible
populated our ever-present world of ancestors.
We heard about these people regularly and with the interest of observing
our closest relatives. And in a sense
they were. For our inheritance was not
of a single clan. It was evident we were
a throwback to no one family, but to the human family. The important lessons about character and its
strengths and weaknesses were continually highlighted as we studied people who
shared our traits in the Bible. And they
were not my kin only, but evidence of a shared kinship in the larger community.
I have come to think that this is the
strongest relationship; and that in many ways Biblical times most closely
reflect current times. From this
viewpoint, pride of ancestry is not as important as persistent humility before perennial
challenges best tracked in scripture from Adam and Eve to present times.
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