Don't Run From Your Roots

Remember where you came from!  A lot of people spend much of their life running from their family history or past.  My home and office have important reminders of my simple roots.  I don't ever want to forget that I came from simple, but honest people.  A miner's coal lamp and a lamp made from an empty bourbon bottle in my office remind me of my roots.  

 While I was born at a hospital in Louisville, Kentucky, we actually lived in a little hamlet in Nelson County called Cox's Creek.  Dad pastored a small church and we lived in a two-story parsonage near the church.  Nelson County is the home of bourbon.   Tobacco was the other big export in an area where the soil was ideal.   While an easy target of critics today, Kentucky natives know that tobacco and bourbon tax dollars built a lot of churches, schools and libraries in the Commonwealth.   Our church had many tobacco, cattle and pig farmers.  They were honest and hard working families who cared about their community and country.  Simple people who believed in God and were trying to make the world a better place by helping others.  And yes there were a few characters.

Both of my grandfathers worked in coal mines.  My maternal grandfather worked in the eastern coal mines while my paternal grandfather worked in the western mines.   If I remember correctly, I think my paternal grandfather was actually kicked out of the mines when child labor laws were passed and had to wait before he returned.  He repeatedly told my father growing up that he never wanted to catch him in a mine.  He knew how tough and dangerous mining could be and he wanted something better for Dad.  He wanted him to get a college education.  He lived long enough to see Dad get a college degree, a masters and his doctorate!  

Before he worked in the mines my maternal grandfather helped make moonshine.  Yes hooch!  Although illegal it provided an income for the poor families in the hills of east Kentucky.  He would probably laugh at all the legal moonshine distilleries popping up across the south these days.  This picture was taken of my grandfather (he is on the left) by a still.  I think my Mom said he was 18 at the time.  He went on to work in the mines and was later courted by big timber firms in the south because he could tell you anything you wanted to know about trees.  So my roots are found in coal miners and moonshiners!  For the record I've never worked in a coal mine and I've never made moonshine, but I didn't have to because their sacrifices enabled both of my parents to pursue higher education.  

I don't run from my past.  I've learned to celebrate it.  More importantly, I've come to realize just what the Apostle Paul meant when he described the past in regard to God's present work and call in our lives in 1 Corinthians:

26 My brothers, remember what you were when God chose you. Not many of you were wise by the way people look at it. Not many of you had power. Not many of you came from a family with a big name. 27 But God chose things that look foolish to the people of the world. He has used those foolish things to put the wise people to shame. God chose the weak things to put to shame the strong people. 28 And God chose the small things, things that people despise. Yes, he chose even the things which seem to be nothing. He did this to destroy the big things. 29 He did this so that people would not be proud before God.30 You are God's children through Christ Jesus. Christ came from God and made us wise. He put us right with God. He made us holy. He set us free from our wrong ways.

Every person has a unique story because it's their story.  No one else shares your exact story.  Perhaps you are one of those people that wants their past to go away.  You have spent more time trying to hide it, or get away from it.  Maybe you run in circles or associate with accomplished people your parents or formative family would've never met.  Maybe you battle a family history of abuse, addiction, or mental illness.  To be sure those are tough memories.  However, they don't have to define you.  They are simply part of who you are today.  You can even make peace with a broken past and I have a mother whose adult life is a testimony to God's incredible ability to bring transformation.  

More importantly, who are you becoming with God's grace?  Paul says that we shouldn't despise small beginnings because God uses the small, simple and humble to bring glory to His name.  Don't seek ways to cover or hide the past.  Instead, we need to ask this question in light of Paul's words:  How can we use our past to shape and inform our present and future to bring glory to God?  Now that's a question worth answering!  

Just think, one day our children, grand and great grand children will recall our history and it's impact on their life.  What are we building?  What kind of roots are we putting down for them and succeeding generations?