A Surprising Blessing

Today I received an unusual and surprising blessing.  I was looking at one of those family tree books about my family and saw a school picture from 1908.   The children were all lined up and a closer look revealed my grandmother on my mother's side of the family about two years before she married.  And at the other end of the row was a picture of my grandmother on my father's side when she was a young woman not yet married.  They obviously knew each other in the country schoolroom and neither could have imagined that her last child would marry the other's last child.  And, certainly they could not see me over a hundred years later being amazed at their picture.

 

We are all connected to others.  While it is true that for some the connection is hard to find because of the circumstances of life, it is also true that none of us got here alone and none us were created to live alone.  As Norman Wirzba wrote in "Food and Faith," we only have to look at the scar we all wear on our stomach.  We are an other oriented creature within this holy creation.  Not only are we related to some by blood and DNA, but we also bear the essence of the Creator deep within our inner being.

Some refer to this place of divine connection as the spirit and others speak of it as the soul.  Whatever words we choose to use, the reality is the same.  The very beginning of the Word reminds us we all, everyone of us, bear the image of the Creator God.  In John's gospel it is written about Jesus, "All things came into being through Him, and without Him not one thing came into being."  (John 1:3)   It is a Word inclusive enough to include everyone one of us.    As surely as we bear the resemblance of those who have birthed us, so is there something within us which speaks of the essence of the God who created us.