Will Multiply

Hebrews 6:14

Saying, Surely blessing I will bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee.

 

In doing genealogical research for my family through ancestry.com, I see how one married couple can have tens of thousands of descendents in less than 10 generations.  Perhaps one married couple had several children, but only one survived to adulthood.  Yet, even that one child yields forth countless more in the family.  I am only one person, yet, over 4000 people have directly contributed to my DNA, to my existence, in less than 400 years of time.  My 10^th great-grandfather, Rev. John Cotton, had no thought of my ever existing – would certainly not have fathomed having a devoutly practicing Roman Catholic granddaughter, no matter how many generations into the future.  And yet, I truly belong to him biologically – without him I, as I am an earthly creature, would not have been born.

This is how reproduction works and it can be scientifically seen and studied.  However, this is not the only way that our actions yield a multiplication of results.  As certainly as one small inheritance, well invested, can secure a dozen more inheritances down the road, as surely as fire started in one corner of a dry forest can spread through the forest entire, so undoubtedly can one worthy thought, lovingly shared, change the thinking of a society.  With care and patience, greatness can be born from something seemingly insignificant.  One man’s writings while sitting in a jail cell of a small New England town can affect the warring politics of India as well as influence, 100 years after being written, the dismantling of the unjust laws of persecution in the southern states of America.  …  And one of countless poor men killed in disgrace by the Roman government, in one tiny corner of the globe, can save the world entire.

There is a saying that a butterfly beats its wings and causes a typhoon to blow on the other side of the world.  How accurate this literal butterfly effect is doesn’t matter for my writing here, but what’s important is that such butterfly effects are not guarantees.  There is no guarantee that one person’s good idea will inspire greatness down the road.  There isn’t even a guarantee that one act of kindness will open countless hearts to love.  It is truly grace, a blessing, for such multiplication to occur.  In the Bible, God promises Abraham that He will multiply his descendents so that they will be at countless as the stars in the sky.  Though Abraham knew he would never see the greatness of Israel, the promise of this future was enough for him.  For he trusted God to keep His promise and he himself did not need to enjoy basking in the fruit – the seed was enough for him.

Biologically speaking, we know that this multiplication of descendents can happen.  But what God promises, as is true with what God gives, is more than mere mechanics.  God’s promise to Abraham reaches out beyond the exponential math of reproduction to include the entirety of humankind gathered into one family in Christ.  And as Christians, we are vehicles for this multiplication when, in, with, and through grace, we heal the wounded and free the enslaved.  Our acts of healing and saving are not necessarily big and obvious – and they are never mere singular events in one finite space of time.  They are the continuation of Christ’s loving, healing and saving act, flowing through us into the future.  Like a fire that burns hot and bright here but low and dim there, it is kept alive by small embers, and it continues to burn and spread.  Although it may jump and fizzle, burn out and rekindle, the consumption will be complete – if God wills.

 Christina Chase