So you’re trying to decide where the newborn in your family got his looks? Oh, no! Surely he’s not going to have Dad’s nose! Aren’t those eyes peeping up from that cute little face just like Grandma’s?
Well, let’s broaden the view just a bit. Why stop with Grandma’s generation? There’s a whole bunch of ancestors out there just waiting to share their characteristics with us. Take a look.
You have:
2 Parents
4 Grandparents
8 Great Grandparents
16 Great Great Grandparents
32 Great Great Great Grandparents
64 Great Great Great Great
Grandparents
128 Great Great Great Great Great
Grandparents
256 Great Great Great Great Great
Great Grandparents
512 Great Great Great Great Great
Great Great Grandparents
1024 Great Great Great Great Great
Great Great Great Grandparents.
Total up these ten ancestral generations and you’ve got 2,046 pro-genitors, each one eager to pass his or her genes down to you. If we figure maybe twenty to twenty-five years per average generation, this goes back only 200 to 250 years, give or take, and roughly reaches the period of the American Revolution. This gets scary when we realize how many direct forefathers (and mothers) we’d find if we could work our way back to the time of Martin Luther or Caesar Augustus or Abraham. Not to mention Adam and Eve.
There’s been a tremendous amount of fruitfulness and
increasing in number taking place since God introduced the topic of population
growth to our earliest parents. And every family on earth is important to him.
As a matter of fact, the whole concept of what family means and should be is
derived from the fatherhood of God (see Ephesians
The really important thing is not whether the kids resemble Mom or Dad’s side of the family, but how well they conform to the image of the heavenly Father. We’re all God’s children and want to grow up to be like him in godly ways. We have many fathers, but only one Father. We’re blessed to be brothers and sisters in his house.