Thoughts from the Sukkah part 3

sukkah 1I hate to give a spoiler to my “How I got here” series I’m doing — you’ll have to check it out to get the details and the bigger story — but Sukkot is special this year.

In this last year I confirmed my Jewish DNA and began to uncover the ancestry through which it came.

As I stand in the sukkah and wave the lulav, I am imagining generations of men, women and children doing the same — all the way back to those who dwelled in sukkahs for 40 years.

I am thinking of their lives.  Of the places that I have traced them.  Of the regions that my genetic code revealed to me.  I am thinking of the times and seasons throughout history that they walked, survived, learned and did things that are stored in my very own DNA.

Jewish or not, of course God knows us intimately!  As He palpated us in the womb (Psalm 139:13), He was very aware of the history of our genetics. He sees inside of our being back a thousand years to those who loved Him.  He also sees those who did not, those who were His enemies.

Recently I spoke with another friend who has been looking at his genealogy and we marveled at how certain lines are so interesting — righteous people who only open (backwards and forwards, although every so often there are 3 or 4 generations that give you pause) into more righteous people.  One line I followed traced back to the Puritans and included all sorts of amazing stories of the pastors and church founders. (Also, one of the first couples to be publicly scourged in Plymouth for indecency — I can only imagine they looked at each other. Held hands?  Maybe she showed her husband her ankle.) Farther back, in medieval times, there were men and women who retreated to monasteries near the end of their lives — learning that validated how I’ve always known I would have been a mystic!  Something in my soul connected to them when I learned about them.  How unsurprised I was to reach a point where the family crest included a Star of David.

I realize that beyond a certain point there is no way to prove the names of the lineage. (Some records go way back, but some don’t. Since I’m not looking into my genealogy in a vain way, or to name drop through history, I’m okay with that.) I actually began the genealogy part rather skeptical that I would find anything.  As I expected, most lines that open up go back one or two generations, if that.  As my friend so aptly put it, the poor didn’t keep records.  The few lines that I have been able to follow that go back much farther have been interesting to me – even where none of the names are anyone you or I would recognize.  Considering how often children from adultery were folded into the family and how rarely records of baptisms contain the same date as records for births, etc., I hold much of the information loosely.  But so far, it has all matched what I know of my DNA and that is exciting.  It means that the information is more likely accurate, more likely revealing to me people from whom I come.  It means, at the very least, I’m not off on a wild goose chase.

God knows all of these things. He knew them when I didn’t. He purposed them!

He knows what each of us will be ready to start out doing because He knows the level of our branch and whether it is currently attached to His tree or not.  Will He need to call us back to Him? Or are we all ready to go as soon as our feet hit the ground? He knows what we are capable of and what we will be willing to be capable of.  He knows the depth of our faith and the intensity of our hope.

He knows us.  Intimately.

As I stand in the sukkah this year and look forward with wonder and hope to Messiah’s return, I am aware that we are on His timeline and not ours.  I pray that I will be one of the people in my children’s children’s (should He wait that long) ancestry who have righteous stories attached to them. I pray that from me will come a thousand generations who God remembers because of me.  I am so grateful to those God remembers when considering me.

When a prayer begins, “God of our Fathers, God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” it is asking God to remember them — to not just consider us, standing before Him as individuals who have confessions and requests.  It is saying, “When you look at me, when I stand before you, please remember Abraham, Isaac and Jacob too.  Please see them standing here with me.  I carry their DNA and they were found worthy.”

That shouldn’t bring arrogance — as though that makes us more important than someone standing before God who cannot invoke righteous genealogy.  That should bring humility.  It should bring gratitude. It should bring perspective that left to ourselves who knows where we would be.  And it should bring hope that, even with all they did wrong, they are counted by God as righteous — God can turn the weeping of our lives to joy and hope as well.  That’s what He does!

In case you missed them . . .

Thoughts from the Sukkah Part 1

Thoughts from the Sukkah Part 2

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