Jewish Mother

Tamar, Judah's daughter-in-law, bore him Perez and Zerah. Judah had five sons in all. – 1 Chronicles 2:4

What captures my attention about this section of the Bible isn’t what you might think. The first read through this verse strikes us odd, these thousands of years later. Early in humans’ history as told by the Bible, it was not at all uncommon for brothers to marry sisters and for grandfathers to also be your uncles, etc. That’s not actually what amazes me about this verse. It’s not even the fact that Judah had five sons (daughters were not typically recorded); large families were not at all uncommon either. What strikes me the most about this section of scripture is how the ancient Jew cared so much about their families that they bothered to write down their names. It’s sad, but I don’t know the names of my great grandparents, let alone generations earlier than that. Heck, I can hardly keep all my cousins straight (just kidding…are any of my cousins reading this?).

Our families are the most basic representation of a local church that we have. Our families demonstrate many higher truths about discipleship, selflessness, service, discipline and unconditional love. Let’s practice loving (not to mention remembering) our families today.