One Big Happy Family

Recently, I was on a popular site for finding your family history when a wonderful thought came to me.  You see, my family history is a little different (isn't everyone's).  My dad was adopted by his "dad" (step-father) and he didn't meet his biological father until my dad was 21 years old. His fathers line cannot be traced past his father.  My paternal grandmother was born in Canada and her family history can be traced back a total of about 6 generations.  Now, my mom's side is a different story!  Her father and mother were Mormon and so our family history on my grandfather's side can be traced back to 1406!! That was actually pretty cool. I discovered a lot about my family, but unlike the tv show that advertises the site, I did not find any hidden family secrets or a long lost famous family member. Nope, just a lot of hardworking people who came across the plains in handcarts or down from Canada in hopes of making a better life for themselves here in America.

Thinking about my personal family history I began to pray and thank God that even though my family is comprised of a diverse group of  people, so to speak, my parents made a decision to follow the Lord.  These decision for my parents came later in life, and at 18 years old, I too decided to follow Christ.  I have raised my children in the ways of the Lord, and I have full hope and confidence in Him that one day my children, too, will follow after Him with their whole hearts.  As I was praying and thanking God for the heart changes He has made in my family, ?he began to place a thought in my heart.

You see, when we begin to follow Him, we are grafted into His family.  Therefore, my "relatives" become those spoken of in the Bible!  If you are a Believer, you too have a rich family history of Christ followers!  Think about it!  One of your family members faced a den full of lions and lived to tell about it.  A women in our family history once met Jesus at a well at a time in her life when she was so low and so depressed due to the sin in her life that she felt ashamed and unworthy to gather water with the other women in her community.  Jesus picked up her broken heart, spoke life and truth into it and she was a changed woman!  Wow!  Then there is a family member who spent some time in a whale and ended up right where God wanted him to go!  There are stories in my family of a woman giving birth to a child long after her child bearing years had come and gone; people in my lineage who walked and talked with Jesus; and even a man member of my family was brought back to life by Jesus; another was freed from a demon; one went from being a man willingly killing Christians at the very sight of one into a man who was a close, personal friend and witness to Christ who eventually died for His faith.  WOW!  These are amazing people, and they are related to me because of my adoption into the family of God.    Cool!