Jesus’ Ministry
March 4, 2019
Scripture Reading: Deuteronomy 26:1-11
you shall make this response before the Lord your God: ‘A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors; the Lord heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. –Deuteronomy 26:5-9
Why do we contribute to the support of our faith group? The segment quoted above is the words Israelites were instructed to say when they brought the first fruits of their harvest and donated it to their faith group in various places throughout their sojourn. It is a litany of the historic acts of God in the stages of their lives starting with the wandering Aramean, Abraham, and ending at their entry in and claiming of the Promised Land.
Reading this litany in this light made me wonder what my litany of the historic acts of God might be. My knowledge is limited to bits and pieces of history about some parts of my family and extensive documentation about others. To my knowledge, my first ancestors to arrive in the New World came in 1630 fleeing religious persecution in England. They were active in starting a new nation and perhaps practicing some intolerance of other religious beliefs themselves. In another ancestral line, my 6th great grandfather probably arrived in the USA in 1759 on a prison ship from England along with his 16-year-old son by the same name also in my ancestral line. I have yet to discover the crime that won him a berth on the prison ship. I must assume his son was also guilty of some crime. Failure to pay debts was one of the main reasons for such punishment. The son indentured his son as a servant for seven years to learn the trade of working in the iron/steel industry, which he did. His first wife and he had six children all duly christened in the Anglican tradition. She died and he married my ancestor. In 1824, he served as a trustee for a newly forming Methodist church. One of his sons, also my ancestor migrated to Illinois in 1834, where town history indicates that the first worship service held by “whites” was conducted in his home, an indication that the indigenous population recently removed from the area included Christians also. When I read it I was surprised that someone thought it was important to remember.
I am sure readers do not want me to go through similar litanies for the other six ancestral lines I track, but I share this to encourage all of us to consider the history of God’s acts in our lives and how they are still playing out today as we learn from their successes and mistakes and shape our faiths in our relationships with God striving to answer God’s call to create a world ruled by love which takes investment of all our resources.
Prayer: Thank you God for being present in the lives of our ancestors in faith back to and including Abraham. Let their example guide our giving. Amen.