Sometimes when I visit my cousin, I take advantage of her location and go to a nearby record office to do some research into the history of my uncle's family who lived in that area. After one such trip this week I began to write up what I'd discovered, and follow up with things I can look up on line. I tried to find my uncle and his family on the 1939 Register (a survey made just after the start of World War II that was used in the issue of ration cards and, after the war, in the administration of the Health Service).
One feature of the on line presentation of this record is the provision of a multi-age map showing the location of each address. Having found my uncle's address, Merrils Farm, on the outskirts of Derby, I scrolled down to look at the map. Having also looked at the modern version of the map I realised that, although the farm is no longer there, its location is very close to the road I would have driven on quite often a few years ago when making frequent deliveries to Rolls Royce.
But what amazed me most was the amount of time I spent mesmerised, just looking at that map on my computer screen. My uncle wasn't my direct ancestor and, although I remember his occasional visits with affection, he died when I was only 13. Nevertheless, I was just spellbound by my discovery that I'd often passed near to somewhere that he had lived.
As the current craze - facilitated by advances in digital technology - for interest in family history witnesses, our roots are important to us. The Old Testament tells the story of God's people, the Israelites, who had constantly broken their covenant with God and as a consequence had been exiled from their promised land and were under the control of the rulers first of Assyria, then of Babylon, and later of Persia. After many years, there began a gradual return from exile under Zerubbabel, a prominent Israelite and descendant of King David. The story is told in the early chapters of Ezra. The return took quite a while to get going; eighty years later Ezra himself led another tranche.
After another thirteen years, word came to Nehemiah, who was the cup-bearer to the Persian king, of the state of Jerusalem, still not rebuilt despite the years that Israelites had been back there. Nehemiah was very affected by this news and sought the permission of the King to lead a party to Jerusalem (Nehemiah ch. 1-2). The remainder of his book tells how he followed up God's inspiration to lead the returning Israelites to rebuild their city and to support the priest Ezra in the rekindling of their covenant with God.
I was intrigued by the link with my long-dead uncle; Nehemiah was moved by the derelict state of a city he'd never seen. What is it that is so magnetic about our roots? And what can it teach us? The fundamental lesson is this. God created us for one purpose only: to have a relationship with Him. We are hard-wired for that purpose, as the psalms tell us. "Earnestly I seek you; I thirst for you. My whole being longs for you." (Ps. 63:1); "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God." (Ps. 42:1). The next best thing to a relationship with God is the tie with members of our family, not just our children, but also our forbears and ancestors ... it's all part of the wonderful mystery of creation and procreation.
If, like me, you're obsessed by and drawn to your own family history, why not take that fascination one step further and develop an equal interest in and response to the One who has loved you constantly since you were in your mother's womb?
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