Murray Bowen, who founded Family Systems, encouraged others to become experts in their own family history. Last week I reached out to my brothers to try to recapture a memory from my childhood. Were my mom here and not yet in heaven, I would have only had to call her. She would have known. How do I know? She always knew.
The ancient world was an oral culture as opposed to a writing culture. People kept track of their family histories and repeated them generation after generation. In this way, ancestors were not forgotten. Now, for the second time, Genesis offers us a particular family line descending from Shem, the son of Noah. The names and details feel a bit repetitive. Each of these male ancestors lived, had children, lived afterward, and died. One takeaway appears to be that having children did not kill the parents. As young parents, we sometimes wondered.
Another and more important takeaway is that the lives represented are not random. The writer is moving us in a direction. Some people look back at history as just a matter of chance accidents which happened along the way. But the scriptures show us that history is directional. History is His story. The writer is showing us how we got to Terah after the flood. Terah descended from the line of Shem as part of the Semitic peoples. For hundreds of years, people lived, had children, and died. But in all of it, God was moving history forward in a particular direction. Each person mattered, though we don’t know much about them.
Remember in our previous genealogy, Enoch distinguished himself from his ancestors and descendants by walking with God (Genesis 5:24). In the semitic line, Terah made a move in obedience to God. That decision was essential to the deliverance of the broken world. In a polygamous world, Terah and his son Abram staked their lives on the one true God. And to quote Robert Frost, that road, “less traveled by, made all the difference.”
Against the idea that history is a matter of random chaotic choices, Genesis reminds us that things are moving in a direction. God set the direction. In each generation, in each family, he seeks out those who will answer his call. In your family, in this generation, will you respond to his call or go your own way? You really do have a choice. Be aware: the choice you make could make a difference in thousands of lives for eternity. Choose well!
