Common Ground

Genesis 4:17 - 6:8 I’m not sure how it happened or exactly when it happened, but a few years ago, the interest in finding out our ancestry became a big business. Now I’m sure there are a lot of contributing factors to this, but the question I want to ask is, “What does it matter to us now to learn about our family of origin and where and who we come from?” Who Great Grandma was and what she did matters to us because it helps tell and understand our own stories, even if in an ever so small way. The same is true for God and Israel when they are telling the story of Genesis to the people of the Exodus. The space between Cain killing Abel and the Flood is significant space and narrative even if it just looks like boring old genealogy stuff. God is communicating to his people that there are two lines that are drawn out from Adam, the line of Cain and then the line of Seth. Two paths diverged in a wood and...you get the idea. Yet in the midst of the ancestry, there is a pattern of both sin and righteousness that is