The God of the generations

There are times when blessings come into our lives and we believe that this is due to something good that we did. Not necessarily. Perhaps the blessings come from something that someone behind you did, an ancestor who put in the heavenly bank a spiritual deposit from which you are now benefiting.

A brother in my church specializes in genealogy studies, and some time ago he did some research on my family lineage. It was fascinating to read the study, and to be able to connect with my ancestors up to the generation of my great-great-grandparents. I am Dominican, but my family through my paternal grandfather was from Puerto Rico. In the document I could see a couple of photos of my Puerto Rican ancestors. One was called Trinidad; another was called Evangelista.

I suspect that the fact that my family was Protestant many decades ago, when there were not so many evangelicals in Latin America, sowed the seeds of many blessings that later, generations later, have reached me and many of my relatives. It is likely that there was a healthy fear of God in my parents, a vital faith in Jesus, and that echoes of that faith are still blessing me and my family, many decades after my parents disappeared from this earth.

And that is the reality, my dear readers. When we live faithfully before the Lord, when a father or a mother, or a grandfather, blesses his descendants with his blessing and his spiritual covering, the blessing, promises us the Word of God, it passes until the third, the fourth generation. There is a text that says that God blesses up to a thousand generations. Not an elephant has a memory as long as the Lord's! Remember that: What you do for the Kingdom of God will continue to bless your generations.

Perhaps you are just beginning to be a parent; maybe you made a mistake and there is a child out there who was born out of wedlock. Don't let this overwhelm you. Cover your children with your faithful and consistent parenting. Nurture yourself on the Word of the Lord. Eat avidly for the Gospel. Let it saturate you and sculpt you in a penetrating way. And then, pass that digested blessing on to your children, and make sure they have a father who cares for them, who loves them, who watches over them. That they do not lack the warmth of a father or mother at any time, no matter what the circumstances of their birth have been.

You are a father or a mother, and that is irrevocable. Soak your children in your blessing and love for God so that it will haunt them for the rest of their lives. God's blessing will come to your descendants through your spiritual work on their behalf.

The Bible says, "Train a child in his way, and when he is old he will not depart from it." The blessing, the mercy of God, the echo of God, is going to haunt yours wherever they go, and it is going to reach them now, or later.

Believe in it; live that, father or mother, man or woman of God. Commit your children to the Lord, and enjoy your fatherly or maternal labor. Don't let yourself be overwhelmed by anxiety about your children's future. Actively trust the future intervention of the Lord in the lives of yours, and cast your anxiety on him. You will never be disappointed!