It was during a very heated game of Spades (which Greg and I dominated), that the aforementioned Mr. Harper alluded to the fact that he recently began tracing his family lineage. This has always intrigued me, but I've never gotten too involved in the necessary actions to actually do a family tree. After we got finished destroying Holly and Lisa, Greg showed me ancestry.com. This was around 10 pm. At 2:30 am I had traced my Grandmother's maiden line back to 1279 in England. 1279. Unbelievable. That's like during the time of the Crusades. A contemporary of Genghis Khan (almost). It was before the Black Plague. America had not even been found, and would not be for another 220 years! I met some of my forerunners. They were an interesting bunch. The Hope family has had it's share of escaped convicts, aristocracy, and loons.
Perhaps the thing that struck me the most while sifting through all of that history was how small I am. One in the midst of multitudes who were before me. The way that different families came together and produced offspring, that most of the time found a wife from a different family, to produce more offspring for generations and generations began to blow my mind. It is a miracle that I'm even here! I haven't been able to get over that feeling of smallness since that time. In the grand scheme of things, I'm quite insignificant. On the other hand, God is rather big... and long lasting. I wonder perchance if this is one of the reasons that lineages are mentioned in Scripture. To remind that generation in Israel that they were no big deal. God has been doing this for a while, and as much as we want to think that the world revolves around us, we are not the end all, or the pinnacle. Just another name in the line.
