Genesis c. 10

10:1 This is the account of Shem…

Lineage meant a lot to the Hebrew. This is how they have preserved their identity.

When my father was still alive he would bring me along to visit his relatives and my father’s relatives would always comment that I looked like my father; my older brother they said looked like my mother. Of course opinion differs but majority of my father’s relatives and even the older people in our neighborhood say that I looked like my father.

I was looking at my late grandmother’s picture and she looked just like my father.

Now the younger generations never knew my father. Of course, no use in telling them that I looked like my father and if my daughter looked like me, then she looked, in a way, like my father. My daughter has some features from her mother too, but my wife’s parents, my in-laws, say that my daughter looked more like me.

Tracing our ancestry can be fun. My cousin told me this, “You know George my mother (my father’s sister) said that they had an uncle who can play the guitar. Maybe that’s where you got your love for the guitar.”

It’s fun trying to trace one’s physical features, eccentricities and skills from long dead relatives.

But in the end what is important is that we find God in our search for our ancestry, find God and recognize him because God is where we all came from.

Nothing would be uplifting than someone saying to you, “You know I see God’s work in you.” I pray and hope that one day someone would say that to me.