The Strings of Our Lives

   One of the great things about walking in the quiet of the early morning, especially on a Saturday, where a lot of people sleep in, is the collection of random thoughts that go bouncing around in your head. Take, for example, this morning where the writing on a van, parked in front of where we used to live, set off a small chain reaction in my thoughts.

   This white van was not from this county, but one out in the middle of the state, and it was not the origination of the vehicle that got me to thinking, it was the name on the side. Martha Bowman and a Methodist logo made up the identification. Then the questions:

   Who was Martha Bowman?

   Why was this Methodist Church named after her?

   Was she related to our family?

   I have done enough genealogical research on my family lineage to see how many small decisions by people long in the past, have shaped my life as to where I am, and who I am. And then I think about how the number of these decisions by others, not in my family, have also led to the same thing.

   If I just think about my own marriage, the number of strings involved is staggering. There are all the things that got me to the place where I could meet my future wife and likewise all the various elements that went into her arrival at the same place at the same time. One small decision in either line would send it off into an entirely different direction, and the intersection of two lives would not have happened.

   If I just move it forward a couple of generations to my grand children and their future wives and husbands, the number of separate strings wound together to produce that moment in time would be a strand of many cords.

   Taken on a purely secular basis, this all seems like random chance. What are the odds that one person, dependent on the choices and decisions of many, many men and women back through time, would meet and marry another, whose ancestors have made just as many choices, so that their arrival at the same place in the same moment of time would produce a marriage and offspring.

   If God is in control, and has been down through all the centuries, He must have planned all of this. If I believe that, then I must conclude that there is a reason behind all of the choices and decisions. All the various strings have been wound into a rope in a particular way, for a particular reason. It may be fun to unravel the rope to think about each string, but it may be more worthwhile to take that rope and do something with it.

   The very least that I can do is to consider the impact of any choice and decision that I make on those that follow after my string. I need to leave them a stronger rope and not one frayed and worn at the end. I realize that fact, right here and right now. God, help me do it.

   Now, who is Martha Bowman, anyway?