Amber, my daughter, has been working on our genealogy lately. It is something that I find interesting but am not really willing to invest the time or money to accomplish. Thankfully, someone else did. While the project is ongoing, there are a few things that she has learned.
There seems to be a number of preachers in my family. I never met any, but serving the kingdom seems part of my DNA.
My family has been in the states a long time. Members fought in the Civil War (on both sides) and the Revolutionary War. There seems to be a veteran of the French and Indian war as well. It looks like most of those she found arrived early 1700s and maybe late 1600s.
One family line has been traced to the thirteenth century. And another into the sixteenth. One, John Walsh, pictured here, seems to have been a preacher of some note. He was willing to get in trouble with the English Crown and was exiled to France where he served one king of France for a while. He was also such a good preacher back in Scotland that the city built him a bigger church. Fun to know.
What is the most interesting thing about the search is the connection to the past. This is part of our Christian journey. The Bible is a family story. This story begins with Adam and expands, moves through Noah and expands, then Abraham, and expands, Judah and expands, finally Jesus, and expands. Through the pages of scripture we find people interacting with their culture, communities and their God. Time and again we are called to remember this person or that person, and more importantly, their God. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are noted for this. The cloud of witnesses in Hebrews is there to cheer us along on our journey. They made it, and so can we.
