Son of David, Part 1

Last Sunday I taught Sunday school.  While we don't use it every Sunday, our normal curriculum is the International Bible Series, and that is what I used as a resource last Sunday.

The lesson was about Jesus as a descendant of David.  I thought it might make a few good blog posts, so the next few days will be focused on that topic.

Have you noticed on Facebook the current "habit" of posting older pictures on Thursday - it's called Throw Back Thursday, or TBT.  I wonder why that has become so popular to do (although I do enjoy the pictures).  Why are there so many people who are fascinated by genealogy? What do we learn by learning more about our ancestors?

My grandmother's grandmother (or maybe great-grandmother) was a Cherokee.  If you saw a picture of my grandmother, you would see it, right away.  She had the dark dark hair and high cheekbones of a Native American.

In 1924, Virginia passed the Racial Integrity Act, which (according to Wikipedia, "required that a racial description of every person be recorded at birth and divided society into only two classifications: white and colored (essentially all other, which included numerous American Indians). It defined race by the "one-drop rule", defining as "colored" persons with any African or Native American ancestry. It also expanded the scope of Virginia's ban on interracial marriage (anti-miscegenation law) by criminalizing all marriages between white persons and non-white persons."  By definition, anyone with more than 1/16 Native American ancestry could not be considered "white."

Of course, that law was overturned by the court case of Loving vs Virginia, but for me, it made something that was in the past much more personal - if my grandparents had lived in Virginia, it would have been illegal for them to be married.

That's one reason we look back to see where we come from.  It helps us to connect with where we came from and what part of what has created us to be who we are today.

The Israelites remembered who they were.  They knew they were descendants of Abraham and that God had made particular promises to the line of Abraham.