Adam, Seth, Enosh…
1 Chronicles 1:1 (NIV)

Our family is looking forward to Christmas Day this year with added anticipation. That is the day that HBO premieres its new Harry Potter series. We will definitely be cuddled in as a family watching.

The Harry Potter movie franchise was immensely popular. The movies have become part of our cultural landscape. However, those of us who are true fans of the books and the actual story that J.K. Rowling wrote find the movies lacking. Because the movies were made before all seven books were written and published, the writers, directors, and actors were all limited by their ignorance. Important themes and plot devices critical to the arc of the epic story were missing or minimized in the films. Those making the movies simply didn’t know. The story was still being written.

With the HBO series, Rowling’s epic will be unpacked on the screen over multiple seasons, allowing for a more thorough retelling. New cast. New production. New vision of how it should be envisioned on screen for a different generation.

Same story. Different telling.

Today, our chapter-a-day trek continues to press on through the books of history in the Great Story. We’re entering 1 Chronicles. Like the new HBO Harry Potter series, we’re going to be revisiting the same stories we read in Samuel and Kings. This account was written later in history. Jewish tradition holds that Ezra wrote Chronicles after the Hebrew people returned to Jerusalem after their exile in Babylon. That’s not certain, but we know that it was written for a different generation of Hebrews to address the questions they were asking as a people at that point in time:

Does God even care about us?
Does God’s covenant to David still matter?
What does it mean to be God’s people living under and ruled by an empire?

So it’s fascinating how the Chronicler launches his retelling. Unlike Samuel, who begins with a heartfelt story of one barren woman’s desperate prayer, the Chronicler pulls back the camera and gives a very different establishing shot. The curtain rises, and he begins at the beginning of the Great Story itself: Adam. There’s no narrative. Just the name we all know. The Chronicler assumes his readers know the stories. He simply names the names. A lot of names.

Get ready. We’ve got eight more chapters of names to go. The first nine chapters of Chronicles are lists of names. But God’s base language is metaphor. The Chronicler is using these genealogical lists metaphorically. There is meaning in the lists that can be so maddeningly mind-numbing to the modern, casual reader.

Today’s opening chapter has four movements:

Verses 1–4: From Adam to Noah
Verses 5–23: The Nations of the Earth
Verses 24–27: From Shem to Abraham
Verses 28–54: Abraham’s Extended Family

Humanity (wide angle: we’re part of all creation)
Nations of the Earth. (zooming in: we’re part of all human nations)
One family line leading to Abraham. (zooming in: we are the line of Abraham)
Abraham’s other lines. (zooming in: these other people groups are our cousins)

There’s something about what the Chronicler is doing that strikes me as particularly relevant to our modern obsession with the individual. We live in a culture that celebrates personal identity, self-expression, individual achievement, and the freedom to write our own story. As an Enneagram Type Four (The Individualist), I celebrate the genuine value of personal agency. But the Chronicler offers me a perspective that I need.

I didn’t begin my story. I inherited it. Before I took my first breath, generations of people had lived, loved, struggled, sinned, repented, endured, and died. Their choices shaped the world into which I was born. Their successes and failures became part of my inheritance. I am simultaneously the recipient of a story and a participant in its unfolding. And, I will eventually pass that story along to Milo, Sylvie, MJ, their children, and their children’s children. All those who will come after me.

This is particularly meaningful in the context of the Chronicler’s audience. Imagine being a young Jewish man or woman living in Jerusalem after the exile. You know the stories of David and Solomon. You’ve heard about the magnificent Temple that once stood in Jerusalem. You know that your ancestors were conquered, your people deported, and your nation humiliated. You look around at your comparatively modest circumstances. A city still trying to rise up out of rubble. A temple under construction that is anything but magnificent.

You wonder whether your people still matter. Do the promises still hold? Did the Story end in exile?

And the Chronicler begins: “Adam, Seth, Enosh…”

He is telling them that their story didn’t begin with David or Father Abraham. It began with Adam. The God who was present at the beginning is still present in their own generation. Their present circumstances do not erase their history, nor do their ancestors’ failures invalidate God’s faithfulness. Their diminished political circumstances do not mean that God has abandoned His purposes. They are still part of the Story.

My meditations this morning have me mulling over how this applies to my own life. I inherited blessings I did not earn and wounds I did not inflict. I find in my own family’s history a legacy of faith, generosity, courage, and love. There are also patterns of dysfunction, brokeness, addiction, and fear. The Chronicler’s genealogies remind me that my life is connected to those who came before me. But the Great Story reminds me that inheritance is not destiny.

I didn’t get to choose the story into which I was born. I do get to make choices about the story I pass along. I can perpetuate the destructive patterns I’ve inherited. Or, by God’s grace, I can interrupt them. I can receive what was good, acknowledge what was broken, and seek to leave something better for those who follow.

I think the Chronicler begins with Adam because he wants me to understand the scale of God’s faithfulness. God’s purposes unfold across generations. They aren’t limited to one lifetime. They don’t depend upon one person’s success, nor are they derailed by one generation’s failures.

There is a humility that comes from recognizing my small place in such an enormous story. But there is also tremendous hope. Because the same God who was faithful to generations before us can be trusted with generations yet to come. My responsibility is not to control the entire story. Just to be faithful with the chapter entrusted to me.

In the quiet this morning, I believe the most important thing the Chronicler wants me to understand before he tells me anything about David is that the story is bigger than the Kingdom of Israel or Judah. It’s bigger than the exile, and bigger than any one generation.

And the God who began the Story is still writing it in my story.

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