The genealogy of Jesus reminds us that broken circumstances never place a life beyond God’s purpose. A few years ago, admittedly I had been struggling to keep the habit of reading my Bible each and every day. One day, I prayed to God and asked for Him to spark something in me that would keep me interested and excited about what I was reading. I knew how important reading my Bible was for my relationship with Him. So, I thought, well, I’ll just start at the beginning of the New Testament, makes sense, right? So, I flipped open to Matthew 1 and there, staring me in the face was a part of the Bible people usually dread reading: the genealogy of Jesus. Most would have skipped over those first 18 verses, a listing of 37 generations which start as: “Abraham was the father of Isaac. Isaac was the father of Jacob. Jacob was the father of Judah…” But for me, this was an answered prayer! At that time, genealogy was my newest hobby. I had built my family tree on ancestry.com to over 1,300 names, gone to a class at the library about genealogy, and had even dusted off some family history books my great grandmother had collected (turns out, I wasn’t the only one interested in genealogy). God knew exactly what he was doing when he led me to this passage.
As I researched the lineage of both Mary and Joseph, I learned they both descended from the honorable King David. Then I wondered, was the mother of these royal generations Bathsheba? The woman who David saw bathing on a rooftop, coerced into a relationship, and murdered her husband so he could cover up her first pregnancy? Yes. I wondered why God would bring forth the savior, Jesus, through such a broken and sinful relationship. Was this a fluke or were there other births in this royal lineage that came about through sinful situations? That question sent me down the rabbit hole to study each person in the lineage of Jesus. I quickly discovered God let generations continue despite circumstance of conception being littered with infertility, infidelity, deception, and coercion. He even let generations come about from inconceivably evil people, some who even sacrificed their own children or were cursed by God. Now, there was no question in my mind what God was telling us. Our circumstances don’t have to be perfect for God to use us. The world tells us that if you face an unexpected pregnancy, it isn’t valid, but that’s not what God says. When we’re told to choose abortion because our stories are too messy, too complicated, or too sinful, God says “that’s my specialty.” God is the only one who knows how He is going to redeem our stories. My prayer for each of you reading this is that you will open your Bibles, as I did that day, and ask God to redeem and renew your relationship with Him.
By Kelsey Brown
Chief Communications Officer
