Hi! It was an exciting week of reading this week this week. My how quickly things have turned. Genesis 1:31 quoted God as saying “it was very good” speaking of the humans he had created in His image. In Genesis 6:6 it says that “the Lord was grieved that He had made man”. That is overwhelmingly sad, isn’t it? Before we wallow in the pit of despair, let’s look around some more.
Genesis 5-10
My super quick overview is as follows. 1. Adam’s lineage up to Noah. 2. Noah’s life, family, and rather large task of building a boat and rescuing all of creation from destruction (aka the flood). And 3. Noah’s family tree which becomes world population 2.0. Hopefully that sounds familiar. I sure wish I could insert a little chalk drawing video here. 🙁
Through this reading what kept tugging at my heart was the careful recording of the names from generation to generation.
This is a picture of me with my sister, mom, grandma, and great grandma only 4 generations but still, it was a big moment for a picture day, that I still actually remember. My great-grandmother, her name was Clara, lived a good long life of 85 years. And her daughter, Maggie, who was my granny lived well into her 90s. My sweet mother, Karen Anne’s life was cut short by cancer when she was 74. Those were not the only people in the family but like the we read in Genesis chapter 5 and again in chapter 10, these are the people who matter for the purposes of this story.
Lessons
There are 3 things from the text that make me more deeply.
First – the value of record keeping. For Noah, Abraham, David, and Jesus et al their history is known and recorded for everyone to verify and know that God is who He says He is!
The value of record keeping for me and for all of the generations before and after me is being able to understand and adjust my life due to known health concerns, weaknesses, aptitudes, and so on. We all are influenced by the people who have lived before us and it can be to our benefit to share that knowledge with our children and their children.
Second – the familiarity of life as we know it. I struggled with how to explain this but what I could see is that because we have a history we know there were people that were just like us. They might have has the same or similar struggles or victories, or maybe they faced even more difficult challenges than what we have or will face. There is a comfort in that, don’t you think? Just knowing that generations have gone on before us and their stories have been shared with us so that we can learn from them.
For me, I am not only comforted in knowing that the Bible is filled with the stories of families that were not perfect! I am challenged to glean as much as I can from my own family history. For example, my great-grandmother Clara was the one who took my mom to church when she was a little girl. That was her first exposure to God — she later accepted Christ as her Savior when she was a teen at an event with a friend. My mom’s faith story and mine are quite similar and I’d not really appreciated this until I took a closer look because of this study.
Third – the information we have to share. I spent a little time pondering what it was like for Noah, Mom, the boys, and daughters-in-law as they hung out in the boat. Don’t you think that Noah was talking about his faith in God? About who God was and all that God had said to him? I think so! My goodness, they were tasked with restarting the entire population of the world. I have to believe that they had an incentive to “get this right” at this critical point in history. Honestly, how devastating would be for Noah to experience the dishonorable behavior of his son Ham? Genesis 6:5 comes to mind.
My husband and I have 2 sons and 2 daughters-in-law, so I can relate to Noah pretty well. I also, with the good news that As a Christ-follower, I have a great responsibility to share my faith in Christ with them. And have. They are, at this point in time choosing to be their own gods. Yes, I am like many of you and many in history whose children are not following in the footsteps they’ve been shown. God’s work is not finished! Do not give up friends, Galatians 6:9.
challenge
Generations.
We can be grateful for and glean wisdom from the recorded history of our own family and from God’s WORD.
We can find comfort in what is familiar and/or known both from our own family and from God’s WORD.
We can gather up all of these treasures to faithfully pass along to all who God gives us access, without giving up.
It’s another reason to worship the God who began all of the good in our lives. God wins!
Thankyou Lisa for much insight and your honesty about your own family. We sit in church and “believe ” everyone else ‘s family is on the right track when in all honesty we all have family and friends that would not have made it on the boat.
Your words have reminded and challenged me to continue praying for my family.
Thank you Gloria, never stop praying.