1 Chronicles 1-2

April 30

1 Chronicles 1-2

A list of names. That is what it looks like to me, a list of names that mean little if anything to me. Sure it gives the genealogy of the people of Israel. Some of the names are familiar. Some of the names are hard to pronounce and the people did not seem to do anything significant in the history of Israel. But every name is significant to God. Every name represents a life lived. Every name represents a soul that was created by God to worship Him. Some walked in obedience, others rebelled against God, but every name is important to God.

Every face you see in a crowd, every person that lives on this earth, every one of them is important to God. God has a plan for them. God has a dream for them. God wants to do so much more than most will ever allow them to do. CS Lewis wrote in his essay The Weight of Glory; “Every human being is in the process of becoming a noble being, noble beyond imagination; or else, alas, a vile being beyond redemption...The dullest and most uninteresting person you can talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet if at all only in a nightmare. There are no ordinary people.”

Every one of us has a family tree. We are all influenced by our past and we all influence the future. We may have an effect on other people and their decisions concerning Christ. We may affect whether they are eternally glorious or an eternal nightmare.  Every face in the crowd matters to God. And if every person matters to God, they should matter to us.