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

I remember one of my first reports in school was to write about a President, and my report was on Ulysses S. Grant. Few people know that this was not his name. His given name was Hiram Ulysses Grant. When he was registered at West Point a clerical error listed him as Ulysses S. Grant. Rather than go to the trouble to have it corrected, he just went with the flow.

My study of the famous Civil War general and 18th President back then portrayed Grant as arguably the worst President in history. I remember being rather shocked by this revelation and by the fact that seemingly no scholar had anything good to say about him or his presidency.

Last year I read Ron Chernow’s recent biography of Grant and was fascinated to find a very different take on the man than what I had read when I studied him in my youth. It’s fascinating how our perceptions of past leaders can change with time along with the experiences of history.

One of the things I’ve heard casual critics bemoan about the Bible is the repetition. For example, today our chapter-a-day journey wades into the book of 1 Chronicles, which is largely the same story we read in the books of Samuel and Kings. I get it. To the casual reader, the repetition seems unnecessary. But is it? Sometimes a historian revisits history from a different place in time and finds a fresh perspective and lessons that are needed in that place at that particular moment in history.

The author of Chronicles is writing at a tenuous moment in history. The nations of Israel and Judah were defeated and taken into exile in Assyria and Babylon. Years later, a remnant of exiles returned to rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple under the Persian Empire which ruled the entire region. In the quiet this morning, I tried to place myself in the sandals of those who have returned to rebuild. Everything has changed.

They once had their own nation, then two nations, that are no more. There is no Hebrew king. There is no heir of David on a throne. What does it mean to be God’s people now? Does God even have a plan for His people? Do their faith and their traditions mean anything anymore or was it all a mirage?

What’s fascinating is that I find very relevant and contemporary sentiments in these questions at this moment in history. I hear voices in our culture disparaging Christianity in total and arguing that the world would have been better without it. Current generations have deconstructed their faith and are now trying to find their way through the rubble. We live in a time when technology and information are bringing more wholesale change at a more rapid rate than at any time in human history.

Does my faith mean anything in this time and place? What is God doing? Is God even a part of the equation? If so, what am I to make of it all?

It’s in asking these questions that we go back to the Story itself to seek answers. We start at the beginning and look at the Story with a fresh perspective. That’s what the author of Chronicles has done. He is writing hundreds of years after the books of Samuel and Kings were written. From his precarious moment on history’s timeline, he is revisiting the entire story from all the sources at his disposal to share with his generation.

And so, he goes back to the beginning. He starts with a genealogy. Here is the cast of the Story, of history. A man had a family. The family became clans. Clans became tribes. Tribes became nations. Nations became Empires. But it started with family. My family. Our family.

In the quiet this morning, I feel the call of the Chronicler to join him in revisiting the story once again. Eyes open. Heart open. God, give me a fresh perspective to help guide me through this current stretch of my journey.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.