The Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, saying, “The Israelites shall camp each in their respective regiments, under ensigns by their ancestral houses” Numbers 2:1-2a NRSVue

My Dad died nearly eight years ago and left behind a mountain of pictures, family letters, documents and memorabilia, that when it came time to divide up the estate, landed in my hands to take care of. It sat in boxes in my garage for several years before I divided the items up and put them in proper storage crates. Then one day my daughter came by and began to ask questions about my grandmothers and their personalities. My maternal grandmother was fairly easy to determine since I spent a good bit of time with her in my childhood, but my paternal grandmother was more of an enigma, since there were clear issues between my parents and her. This prompted me to open up the storage boxes and begin to read some old letters that revealed secrets and things I never knew about my parents and my grandmother. I began to see her in a new light that I really could rally around and champion her position in the family like never before. After spending hours reading and organizing these letters, I realized that there was a whole ancestral tree I never knew and the best way to get to know it was to tackle those mounds of pictures and documents I set aside years ago. The other thing I realized was that ancestry is to be shared. So it has now become a project of not just sorting and organizing, but figuring out which of the various family members will benefit from receiving some of these items.

Numbers is one of those books in the Bible that quite frankly, we choose not to read or skim over it quickly. All the names, lists of numbers etc. are not the exciting stories we look to for a source of spiritual inspiration. We might read some of the follow-up accounts of the activities of the Israelites in their wandering like the spies scouting the Promised Land or the revolt of Korah, but for the most part, we ignore this book. I felt this way about Numbers for a long time, until I received it as part of Bible Study subscription service and was reminded that even though the names many not mean anything to me, nor the numbers have any great impact on me, the long lists inform me that there were real people struggling to make it to the Promised Land and God saw fit to include their names in the book. Isn’t that sort of our reality also?

Most of us are just going through our days, and if we are Christians, we are striving to live to make heaven our home one day. We most likely will never see our names in lights or on TV for the great ministries we do in our common lives, but God sees us and God has us written down in His eternal book (Rev. 20:11-15). Furthermore, according to Revelation, the day will come that everyone’s name will be reviewed in the book of life and the book of deeds and our eternal destination will be determined by what is written there. Many will rely on the faith of their ancestors to get them to heaven and some will follow their ancestry straight to hell. That is what is clear to me when I read the Bible.

However, as I have been digging through the mountain of things from my father’s family, I am discovering that my ancestry has helped to shape me. I am finding a strong spiritual connection in my ancestors that helps me better understand the Christian background that I come from, even if it was hidden for years. Christian; this is what I view as my ancestral ensign or banner, not one of names but of faith. I cannot rely on that ancestry for my own salvation and eternity, I have to have my own path for that. I can also see now that what God instructed Moses to do, was not so much for Moses’ benefit but for us to see that God is involved in even the most minute details of our lives and that everyone is important to God. And my going through the mountain of papers and pictures and memorabilia is not so much for my benefit but for the generations to come. This is why I have put myself to the task of sorting, organizing and sharing what I find.