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Culture Watch:On Family Heritage
by Lee Warren (Lee's bio)
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Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will show thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. (Deuteronomy 32:7, KJV)
I've been thinking about family heritage lately. It's hard not to. My Dad died a couple of years ago and nothing ever made me think more about my own mortality and legacy than his passing. It made me want to record my family's history so future generations will know how God worked in our lives.
I don't think I'm the only one thinking this way. It's hard to walk through a bookstore these days without running into the many different types of journals they carry. The Internet is full of websites that help track down information about our ancestors and there's even a website called MyFamily.com that provides free limited space for families to record their history. And of course, family tree software has been available for several years.
If most people are like me, we buy these products with the best of intentions, but life always seems to get in the way of recording our family and personal history. It seems so unimportant in the short term and we don't naturally think long term.
We also don't naturally think about "considering the years of the many generations" as Deuteronomy 32:7 says. In recent generations, even within the church, we seem to have embraced individualism rather than thinking from a covenantal perspective about life. Our natural man always wants to flee from the wisdom of others—including and especially wisdom from our family, because we want to do things our way. That's not to say that our elders always bring proper perspective, but we don't seem to give them the chance.
While my Dad and I didn't always see eye to eye, I still have the many letters he sent me over the years as he traveled for business. I know right where they are and I wouldn't take anything for them. They capture his perspective about events in his life that I can read over and over again. Without those letters, many of his insights would be gone forever. He also took thousands of pictures throughout his lifetime. Like his letters, each picture captures moments that can only be re-lived because he took the time to record them.
What would you give for a journal (or a collection of photos) written by your parents, grandparents or maybe even an ancestor who lived further back than that? Would you like to know what your relatives thought about God—in their own words? Would you like to know what trials they faced and about how God brought carried them through? Would you like to know what their dreams were? What their church life was like? What made them tick? I know I sure would.
It'll be hard to go back and record my family's history in depth because so much of it is not recorded well, but I'll capture what I can and then encourage family members who are still living to record their lives. I also plan to spend some time recording my own life. Recently, I purchased an inexpensive family tree book with all sorts of great questions to answer. It even provides room to record long forgotten family stories. Over the next few months, I am going to take a few minutes a day to record something in the book. I also downloaded a journaling software package recently and have been using the question prompts to record my life. With just a few minutes at a time, I hope to make Deuteronomy 32:7 a passage that my future family members can follow more easily.
This is the first article in a two part series with regards to preserving heritage. The next article will deal with preserving national heritage.
Copyright 2002, Lee Warren. All rights reserved. Used with permission.
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About Lee Warren: Lee Warren is a freelance writer from Omaha, Nebraska. He has written for various publications and is currently working on a novel. If you are interested in reading more of his work or in receiving his column via e-mail, please go to his website: www.leewarrenjr.com or drop him an e-mail: LeeWJunior@cox.net.
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