Not long ago my sisters and I followed an intriguing branch of the Eareckson family tree. One morning we crossed Chesapeake Bay Bridge to Kent Island and on that island we found the original Eareckson homestead and a little family graveyard nearby. My sister, Kathy, poked around the base of a large, spreading oak tree, pushing aside the ivy and tangled brush until she struck rock. There it was – a moss-covered stone with a crudely chiseled name: BENJAMIN EARECKSON; and then, another stone, with ELIZABETH EARECKSON on it. We were absolutely thrilled – you’d thought we’d found gold.
On our way back home to Baltimore, we kept inventing stories about Benjamin and Elizabeth. Pushing back the frontier on Kent Island. Planting the Eareckson banner in the American soil. They were probably early settlers from Scandinavia – farmers, perhaps – or maybe fishermen, since their home was on the edge of a creek leading to the Chesapeake Bay. They must have made friends with the Indians. Their sons probably went to Baltimore and became shipbuilders, or went to Washington and became lawyers. I was bursting with pride and I didn’t even know those people.
But, later on, my pride deflated when I happened to look through a detailed record of our family history. And there I noticed that Benjamin not only kept slaves, but he willed them to his son. A postscript added that the Eareckson family dealt kindly with their slaves, but still I was hurt nonetheless.
It made me wonder how Jesus felt about His human ancestry. A careful study reveals a few rather remarkable characters up in the limbs of His family tree. There were kings and poets, saints and sinners, Jews and Gentiles.
I mean look, for example, at the four women mentioned in His genealogy: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba – all in the need of grace whether from prostitution or because they were aliens, foreigners; one was an adulteress. The presence of these women in the genealogy of Jesus speaks of the extent of God's mercy. It shows how great God's forgiveness really is, how wide His grace. God identified with forgiven sinners, even to the point of including them in His own son’s human ancestry.
And what does that say to you and me? Well, you may feel like an outcast, an outsider. You may feel shame over your family background. You may still ache over the consequences of past sins and failures. Could God's mercy really be available to you? Could He actually love you and use your life for His glory?
No matter who you are, where you have been, or what you have done, you can be a member of God's royal family. And, friend, that is a demonstration of His grace.
Used by permission of
JONI AND FRIENDS
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