April 4, 2017 (Tuesday)
My grandfather loved to talk with strangers and many times they would keep talking until they found common ground and even discovered that they were distant relatives. When the TV show, “Roots,” was introduced to the world, there developed a tremendous urge on the part of many people to discover their own family histories.
It’s not very hard to find out who your grandparents were, and almost as easy to discover the identity of your great grandparents, but it gets a little harder to know who’s who in your family as you progress through the “great great” and the “great great great” generations. There are a lot of people involved by going back in your family tree. The number of your ancestors gets larger pretty quickly. You have 2 parents and each of them has 2 parents. Counting yourself, that’s 7 people. As you go backwards in your family tree, the numbers grow: 1-2-4-8-16-32-64-128. You’ve gone back 7 generations and you already can count 255 people. Beyond that, it’s mind boggling: the next generation’s number is 256, then 512, then 1024. Added to the 7 generations you have already counted, that’ a total of 1,792 people in 10 generations. Beyond that the number is astronomical and gets crazy: 2048, 4096, 8192, 16,384. Added to the 10 generations you’ve already counted, you now have surveyed 14 generations for a total of 32,768. Theoretically, the genes of all those people have been passed down to you. This is only your direct line: parents, grandparents, great grandparents, etc. This does not include aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. You are related to a lot of people! Most are now dead, it’s true, but they were kin. And their descendants are everywhere.
“Maw, have you counted the kids lately?”
It’s not unreasonable to believe that we are all related, however remotely. In fact, were not Adam and Eve ancestors of all of us?
When we are offended or hurt by someone, before we lose our cool and strike back, let’s consider the possibility that we are dealing with a cousin, or some other relative. A distant cousin, true, but a relative nonetheless.
Whether any of this makes any sense or whether it is true or not is beside the point. Jesus taught us to love and forgive people, related or not. He practiced that, setting an example for us to follow. That guy that just cut you off in traffic may not be your cousin, but, in Jesus’ name, forgive him and go on about your business. But, then again, he may be a relative of yours. Cut him some slack.