A Mist That Vanishes

I finished teaching a Bible Study on Noah and the ark recently, where participants spent part of the time talking about genealogy. That every human being could trace their lineage back to Noah and subsequently back to Adam is truly amazing, with more emphasis on the "truly." How remarkable to realize that we are all related to one another. It gives you a different perspective when dealing with people who disagree with you or flat out do not like you.

As a result of the study, I decided to do a little digging of my own with ancestry.com to see how far back I could trace my family tree. My objective was to get as close to Noah as possible. Well, truth is, it's impossible with the records we have available today, but it was fun to see how far back I could go. Thankfully, I have an aunt who spends hours doing genealogical research, so most of the job was done for me. I was able to trace our family back to the third century AD. That's pretty amazing itself.

While doing this research, there was something impactful I learned: most of the people I came across were just names. Yes, they had lives with, I'm sure, fascinating life stories, but we'll never know them. There is just no written historical data about most of these people. Names with no stories, no birthplace records, no occupations, no adventures, no spiritual revelations. It was sad in a way. The only people who had any information about them where the sprinkling of royals in the line or those famous for something really good or, ahem, bad. Like good old Algernon Sydney Cook, my third great grandfather on my mother's side of the family, who served in the Civil War. I excitedly looked up military records to learn what I could about his service, only to discover he created Cook's Guerilla's, a terrorist group, and opened at least one brothel. Yay, great-gramps.

But I found nothing on 95% of the names. The only legacy these people left for me to find was their children ... and their children ... and their children.

I wanted to know more, but there just isn't any more available. It made me look at my own life a little closer. While I am grateful for a legacy of two children and the hopes of future grand and great-grandchildren, I don't want my name to be all that's left of me, (although I'll take that over being remembered for something bad). I want to leave a legacy of faith behind me. I want there to be stories circulating long after I'm gone about what was done to grow the Kingdom of God, the miracles of God at work and lives changed in His name. 

There's a song by Branch & Dean called The Dash about the dash between our birth and death years

found on a tombstone. One line in the song says, "Our story's defined by how we spend the dash." Doing this ancestry hunt brought that home for me. I don't want all that's left of me to be two years and a dash.

James 4:14 says, "Yet you do not even know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes." Our lives are a blip. A vapor. In the words of James, a mist that vanishes. What is the solution? Out-giving, out-loving, out-serving our neighbor in Jesus' name. That's a dash-filled life and legacy.

Praying hundreds of years from now when my descendants do their own family tree hunting, that when they see my name, it's not just a birth and death year they find, but countless stories of serving Christ. Not lost to history but rather motivating the future to do the same ... and leave a legacy of faith.