Heritage

   So its a bit after Christmas, but still the season, and I've been thinking about this for a while. My mom and I had a conversation the other day about how our pasts, especially our family, affect us. I was saying something about how it's hard on kids' self esteems and for them to make right decisions when their parents messed up and didn't give them a good example, to which she replied, "Well yeah, no one wants to feel like they came from trash." It's kind of an obvious thought, however it stuck with me for some reason. And I think it is this - we often see the people we look up to, ie our parents, screw up, and believe to some extent that we can do no better because we are made of the same stuff. Biologically speaking anyway. There is nothing we can do to change who our parents were, who raised us, what they were, the blood they gave us. And we're stuck with what we've got. It is our very substance and it makes us vulnerable. Regardless of how great our parents were or what they have accomplished, they are still human and have made mistakes, and we came from that. An imperfect heritage that we have been plagued with since Eden.
   The part that strikes me as amazing about this season is that with Jesus' birth, we have been given a new heritage. "Unto us a child is born" -- Emmanuel, meaning "God with us". God broke the monotonous shackle of unshakable sin from our lineage and invites us to become heirs of his kingdom instead. What amazing grace that God deemed us worthy enough to dig us up from the muck of the sins we've planted our own roots into and adopt us as sons and daughters. We no longer have to look at what we were born into and say "That's as good as it's gonna get." No longer are we doomed to stoop under the insufficiency of our human heritage, but we can now rest assured that we come from One who will give us the grace and strength to do great things and rise above. Christ was born so we could be reborn into the life we were originally created for.

John 10:7-10 : "Therefore Jesus said again, "I tell you the truth, I am the gate for the sheep. All who ever came before me were thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. I am the gate; whoever enters through me will be saved. He will come in and go out, and find pasture. The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy; but I have come that they may have life and have it to the full."

1 John 3:1 : "How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God. And that is what we are!"


---You make beautiful things out of the dust :)