We Each Have a Story

I will be interested to review his assertion about 1820 being an inflection point for society in history.

In this age of “I chose me” societies benefit by forging connections between generations.

Gather his list (4 items)

Do you know your story?

What does it mean to know your story?

We each have more family with whom to connect. If you think your great-aunt has completed all your family genealogy, please find your cousins and cousins’ cousins. Connect your living memory family names with the 10 billion searchable names FamilySearch now has in its online collection and the 1.3 billion individuals in its Family Tree.

This suggests that knowing your story means knowing your heritage.

The question “Where are you from?” asks lineage, birthplace, and home country or homeland. Globally, 25 percent of us trace our homeland to China, 23 percent to India, 17 percent to other parts of Asia and the Pacific, 18 percent to Europe, 10 percent to Africa, 7 percent to the Americas.

In other words, a Euro-centric understanding of history is only a fraction (⅙) of history.

When asked where meaning comes in life, most people rank family first. This includes family living and gone before. Of course, when we die, we don’t cease to exist. We continue to live on the other side of the veil.

Still very much alive, our ancestors deserve to be remembered. We remember our heritage through oral histories, clan records and family stories, memorials or places of remembrance, and celebrations with photos, foods, or items which remind us of loved ones.

How would our family change if we cared about and understood our heritage?

In this age of “I choose me,” societies benefit when generations connect in meaningful ways. We need roots to have wings—real relationships, meaningful service, life beyond fleeting social media veneers.

Connecting with our ancestors can change our lives in surprising ways. From their trials and accomplishments, we gain faith and strength. From their love and sacrifices, we learn to forgive and move forward. Our children become resilient. We gain protection and power. Ties with ancestors increase family closeness, gratitude, miracles. Such ties can bring help from the other side of the veil.

There’s an answer to my question.

Just as joys come in families, so can sorrows. No individual is perfect, nor is any family. When those who should love, nurture, and protect us fail to do so, we feel abandoned, embarrassed, hurt. Family can become a hollow shell. Yet, with heaven’s help, we can come to understand our family and make peace with each other.

This is the case for us which we are trying to accomplish now rather than let it fester longer and try to heal from further apart.

Forever is too long if we make each other unhappy. Happy is too short if cherished relationships stop with this life.

Learn and acknowledge with gratitude and honesty your family heritage. Celebrate and become the positive and, where needed, humbly do everything possible not to pass on the negative. Let good things begin with you.

If each generation seeks to end negative patterns and begin positive ones the world will go in passive directions.

The promise at Easter and always is that, in and through Jesus Christ, we can become our best story and our families can become happy and forever. In all our generations, Jesus Christ heals the brokenhearted, delivers the captives, sets at liberty them that are bruised. Covenant belonging with God and each other includes knowing our spirit and body will be reunited in resurrection and our most precious relationships can continue beyond death with a fulness of joy.

We each have a story. Come discover yours. Come find your voice, your song, your harmony in Him. This is the very purpose for which God created the heavens and the earth and saw that they were good.