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The Two-Millennia Line
By Scott Harrup | December 1, 2008
On Thanksgiving, our neighbors Al and Evelyn joined our family and friends at my parents’ house. Al served in the Pacific during World War II. It was fascinating to hear first-hand accounts of island invasions.
Al’s stories got me to thinking of the diminishing number of World War II veterans still living. Very likely, my grandkids will ask in surprise what it was like to know those heroes personally. I remember my surprise to learn the last Civil War veterans died in the 1950s, when my dad was in his teens. My grandmother remembered seeing Union and Confederate soldiers march in veterans parades during her Maryland childhood in the 1920s.
History connects us in ways the history books can never record. Imagine, for a moment, a line of just 25 anonymous people. Each man or woman in the line lived into their mid-80s, and his or her life overlapped the lives of the persons before and after in line by two or three years. In other words, their lives form 80-year links in a chain. Just 25 of those links carry you back to the life of Christ.
Perhaps some historian has found a way to overlap a few dozen lives of the famous through the millennia, but whether or not a book is out there the hypothetical line of unknown people has certainly occurred many times over.
A random musing, to be sure. But as this Christmas season reminds us, whenever you connect the dots back to the life of Christ you encounter the One who continues to live throughout the generations.
“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” (Hebrews 13:8, NIV).
Topics: History |
