When we worked at the historical society the genealogists joked that every weekend someone comes in claiming to be related to Charlemange and I never had much interest in my own lineage but I think it would be neat to be related to Charlemagne Palestine. Two generations is the furthest I go back to Memmy who lived to be a sharp-minded 90 and Grammie who at 88 has more pep and ambition than I've ever had and I hope the gametic chromosomes that created me contain DNA from these two women.
But at night, after supper, in this season of Advent we study a different family tree, one that we all share: the one that unites us with God. And the story begins in Eden with the fateful fruit that separated us from our true Spirit-heritage, a mistake that flawed our consciousness and our DNA and followed all of our soul-ancestors to the most astounding, wondrous, craziest of all things possible, that God, building himself in bone and muscle and sinew and dressing in skin to become a body with perfect DNA, was born into a family, a baby who grew on mother's milk and Father's love to humbly walk alongside his creations and boldly show us the way back to him. And each night we twist and coil relationship, strung through our spirit-chromosomes to genes transcribing new growth from a sleeping tree lopped off at its base by a snake and an apple and a couple with a mind of their own, long before Jesse's youngest son had been anointed king; one leading to the hand-hewn rugged tree high on a hill named Calvary that returns us all to God. And scientists can only trace genetic material back so far before life becomes theory but our Spirit selves know the exact moment when life began and our soul-DNA makes us children of God, siblings to Christ.
(Jesse tree scripture, devotionals and ornaments can be found here…maybe for next year?)
(a post from last December...doing this again, an Advent tradition...linking with Ann today)
