The LORD your God, He is God, the faithful God who keeps covenant and mercy for a thousand generations with those who love Him and keep His commandments. Deuteronomy 7:9
I stumbled across this passage a few years ago and began praying intentionally for God to bless our family for a thousand generations.
This past weekend, I got a glimpse of some of those blessings. My family gathered in Kansas to celebrate the 100th birthday of my Uncle WC Carter, affectionately known to the family as “Uncle Dub.” Four generations of family members flew and drove in from all over the country, including Alaska and Hawaii.
On the day after the party, we gathered in the hotel lounge and held a church service led by my cousin’s son-in-law, Daniel McGraw, who is a pastor in Bentonville, Arkansas. We sang hymns and celebrated communion together. Generations of the same family with close ties, though many of us have barely seen each other through the years. Connected through our common faith which was passed down through the generations. I felt in awe that this was truly a momentous event.
I looked around the room and saw my uncle sitting up front, the patriarch and last living family member of his generation. A World War II vet and a former band leader, school principal and superintendent, a man who has given so much back to his family and community through the years. He sat proudly surrounded by his loving, thriving family which he has spent a lifetime pouring into.
And I saw answered prayers. Though we have seldom been together, we would support one another in prayer. I saw the daughters of two of my cousins we had prayed for when they each lost an infant in recent years, and the beautiful rainbow babies God blessed them with toddling around. And another miracle baby born to my cousin’s daughter through IVF, another answer to prayer. And I remembered praying for my cousin’s daughter years ago when she had heart surgery, and again in college when she was hospitalized with a serious medical issue and was barely clinging to life. It was so good to see her as a happy, healthy adult, now the mother of four. I glanced at my brother and thought of how the prayers of this family surrounded us back when he was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Disease at age twelve. God answered our prayers, and we have been blessed with his presence all these years.
Immersed in the blessings of the moment, it occurred to me this could have been a very different story. We all heard the story over and over again how my grandmother was adamantly opposed to Uncle Dub marrying her daughter, my Aunt Dorene, my father’s sister. I never understood that—Uncle Dub has always been the nicest guy. He is loving and supportive to everyone, and he speaks only of gratitude for all God has blessed him with and for those who have helped him along the way. On this visit, we asked him why Grandma didn’t like him.
“Because I came from a broken home, from a long line of broken marriages and people who were alcoholics,” he said. Uncle Dub clearly has a rags to riches story, but at age 19, all his future mother-in-law could see were the rags. He was raised in Oklahoma and Arkansas during the dust bowl. His family owned one precious cow which they worked hard to keep alive and an old pick-up truck. Uncle Dub had attended ten different schools by the time he was in fifth grade because they would move to wherever his stepfather could make a little money hauling things in his truck. They finally settled in Paris, Arkansas, where he became friends with the Brewer family.
I would like to give credit to the Brewer family for Uncle Dub’s transformation. Uncle Dub has said repeatedly through the years that he didn’t only marry Dorene, he married the whole family. He married into a close-knit, fun-loving, faith-filled family. But even Uncle Dub puts the credit elsewhere.
He told us his marriage to Aunt Dorene was only the second happiest day of his life. “The happiest day of my life was the day I was baptized in 1945,” he said. He and Dorene were a young couple living in Menlo Park, California, where he was stationed in the military. They were going to different churches every Sunday trying to decide which one was right for them. A couple they were friends with were being thrown out of their apartment, so Dub and Doby invited them to stay in their spare bedroom. They hit it off right away, and they began going to church with them. They loved the church and soon decided to get baptized, except their small town didn’t have a baptismal, so they went to the church in San Jose for the ceremony. Uncle Dub got it right when he said, “The forgiveness of Jesus Christ has covered a lot of miles since 1945.”
What a beautiful story of hope Uncle Dub’s life is! No matter how your family story starts out, through the forgiveness of Jesus Christ, you can be the one to change that trajectory and bring blessing to your family line.
We all know that families are under attack now perhaps more than any other time in recent history. Please join with me as I pray for the Carter/Brewer/Long and Lee/Alberico families and pray that God will bless your family to a thousand generations!
*Photo by Chelsea Lee Johnson from Prone to Wander Photography