“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” (Matthew 6:9) One of the greatest privileges we have as believers is to address God as our Father! At the core of the Christian faith is the truth that we have a personal relationship with the creator of the cosmos. Our life in Christ is not stuck in a dead sacerdotal routine of dry church, stale choirs, dead sermons, or endless committee meetings.
Every person we meet is on a journey searching for home. That is, looking for the ultimate meaning and fulfillment of life. At times, if we are honest, we all feel orphaned in a world that doesn’t understand us or care what we feel. Satan throws many rotten bananas in front of us to get us to roam off track from finding peace with God. He is a master at diversion, destruction, lies, and deceit.
On and off, for over seventeen years, I have worked to put together the genealogy of my family. There is something special about knowing where your ancestors originated on the other side of the ‘pond.’ Confirming old family rumors through research has been fulfilling. Discovering that my ancestry is from Irish, English, Scottish, Welsh, and Viking has been eye-opening.
The Mississippi writer William Percy said, “Playing Tarzan in the family tree is hazardous business; there are too many rotten branches.” I quickly found some rotten branches. From prostitutes to thieves, from drunkards to drug addicts, from pimps to adulterers, and from religious hypocrites to suicidal maniacs. Of course, there are some heroic branches also, from revolutionary soldiers, civil war doctors, frontiersmen, keepers of the King’s forest, Norse Kings, English noblemen, and aldermen in London. If I was a dog, I would be a mutt!
As we stroll down the trail of humanity that gave us physical life, we come to a resounding conclusion—it is a miracle that we can walk around with any common sense. Or, to use musical terms, each of us could be ‘first chair’ in the band of misfits and fools. Yes, knowing our heritage is fascinating, but there is another heritage we must understand in order to escape the savage DNA of our ancestors.
As we plow through the pages of God’s Word, we discover another heritage. If we have surrendered to Christ, we become children of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This heritage trumps all the rotten branches and enticing bananas from our natural ancestry. We have this inheritance secured for us through the sacrifice of the Lamb of God. The grandest event in human history, the one that swings us from the rotten branches of natural ancestry to the solid limbs of God’s grace, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
When you and I exit this old world, we will either be able to call God our Father because of the new birth in Christ, or we will be stuck defending the fallen nature we gained from our ancestors. We all need a redeemer. Attempting to face God apart from being a member of His family is playing a fool's game, and we will find ourselves standing on... Rotten Branches!
