Grandpa & Granddaughter
Jeremiah 31:3 NIV
I have loved you with an everlasting love.
I love being a grandmother. There is something about seeing your children have children that magnifies love. One of the great pleasures I have discovered is seeing the faces of others within the faces of a new generation. My granddaughter has moments in her expressions that I see my mother. I don’t want to detract from the beautiful uniqueness of my granddaughter that is hers and hers alone. Yet, to see those you dearly loved manifested in those you dearly love truly gives us a glimpse of everlasting love. A love that has no boundaries of space and time.
Studying my family genealogy, I feel as though I knew these people. I feel an unconditional love for them and appreciation for what they endured so I could be here today. My sister visited the home of one set of our 5th great-grandparents, built in 1732. As that grandmother, cooked over the fire, carried laundry up and down the stairs, cried, laughed, sewed, washed, lived, and prayed, she couldn’t have conceived that almost 300 years later we would still come by for a visit. Could she have ever imagined that a picture of her house would hang in my house in a place that never existed in her 18th century life?
God has been witness to all of my family and has loved each one of us in each generation to include my grandchildren’s grandchildren and those ancestors for which no written records exist today. Doing the math, we have sixty-four 5th great-grandparents. That means in just that generational line, God orchestrated thirty-two times that people met so that you could be here today. Going back even farther, you have 1,048,576 18th great-grandparents! Even though there are people that don’t know even one generation of their ancestry…God does! He knows not just my family line, but His family line – the entire Family of God – aka everyone past, present, and future! I actually can’t comprehend the enormity of God’s everlasting love. Yet, I rest assured that my Heavenly Father will continue to greet me every morning and tuck me in each night, until I join Him in the infinity of heaven.
