relationships and community on Ancestors

Pastor: Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity; we have done wickedness. In the trials of this past week, I have not praised you but have forgotten your wondrous works. Al...

You, Lord God, made the eternal fabric of the world appear, and you created the earth. You are always trustworthy, you judge fairly, excellent and marvelous in your power; wise in creating and careful...

Leader: Now therefore revere the Lord, and serve him in sincerity and in faithfulness People: Put away the gods that your ancestors served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord Leader: N...

In her book Keeping Place: Reflections on the Meaning of Home , Jen Pollock Michel reflects on the nature of home in a transient age. In this short excerpt, Michel focuses on etymology of home in v...

We are like dwarfs on the shoulders of giants, so that we can see more than they, and things at a greater distance, not by virtue of any sharpness of sight on our part, or any physical distinction, bu...

Ancients married in order to have children, to cement alliances, and to gain strategic relationships.

Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that...

People don’t rise from nothing. We do owe something to parentage and patronage. The people who stand before kings may look like they did it all themselves. But in fact they are invariably the benefici...

Father and Mother are apostles, bishops and priests to their children, for it is they who make them acquainted with the gospel.

Father of heirs and orphans, Salvation of saint and sinner, Draw near and forgive us. Forgive us for clinging to law more than grace. Forgive us for choosing slavery when you offer us adoption. Forgi...

We think that Paradise and Calvary, Christ’s Cross and Adam’s Tree, stood in one place; Look Lord and find both Adams met in me; As the first Adam’s sweat surrounds my face, May the last Adam’s blood ...

One generation and another generation; the generation by which we are made the faithful, and are born again by baptism; the generation by which we shall rise again from the dead, and shall live with t...

So then you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but you are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God, Being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus ...

In Scripture, adoption meddles with genealogies, subverts oppressive empires, secures imperial inheritances, and opens new possibilities for who can be family.

We the people of this new generation highly resolve that those who sacrificed before us shall not have sacrificed in vain. Let justice roll on.

Heavenly Father, you are faithful, even when we are not. We look to the examples of our parents, and they often fall short. We, too, fall short when we consider the legacy we pass on to our children, ...

Home represents humanity’s most visceral ache—and our oldest desire.

“I believe that what we become depends on what our fathers teach us at odd moments, when they aren't trying to teach us. We are formed by little scraps of wisdom.”

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. Obeyed and went, And he went out, not knowing where he was going. Loving God, give us...

Creator of all things, Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, Father, Shepherd, Servant, Brother, Priest and King. Whose love poured out mends broken hearts. Whose wounded hands reach out to all. Whose S...

“You can know a thing to death and be for all purposes completely ignorant of it. A man can know his father, or his son, and there might still be nothing between them but loyalty and love and mutual i...

What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.

Lifelong family friends own more than a thousand acres of land deep in Southern Mississippi, which they refer to as “the estate.” There isn’t a holiday get-together that passes without the family meet...

Leader: Lord, you have been our dwelling place in all generations. All: Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you a...

Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.

The Latin words humus, soil/earth, and homo, human being, have a common derivation, from which we also get our word 'humble.' This is the Genesis origin of who we are: dust - dust that the Lor...

I sustain myself with the love of family.

In his excellent book, The Magnificent Story , James Bryan Smith shares a true story from Japanese culture that illustrates just how demanding strict disciplinarian fathers can be. The Japanese...

The greatest legacy one can pass on to one's children and grandchildren is not money or other material things accumulated in one's life, but rather a legacy of character and faith.

Almighty God, our heavenly Father, who who creates families for our belonging: We ask for your continual care for the homes in which your people live. Keep them from all bitterness, arrogance, and the...