Just a few weeks ago my youngest son Jon started digging into our roots. When they were younger, I had told our three sons of their great grandfather, Paul, who had left Russia in the early 1900s to come to the USA. I had also told them there was a question as to our surname, whether it is Macinta or Maciuta (pronounced Mah-chew-tah). Those descended from one of my uncles bear the latter spelling.

Well, I must say it was tough, very tough to figure out exactly when Paul Maciuta or Macinta came over. We did finally figure it was probably the end of 1912. If so, he came over with a brother whom I might have heard about when I was a child, but do not know for sure. However, we are pretty sure because this Paul, or what was on the ship manifest as Pawel, was listed in the 1930 census with names that match that of my Dad, uncles and aunts, domiciled at the same location I was later raised at for the first four years of my life.

Tougher yet is my mother’s side, which I ought to reserve for another GemLight dealing with the aspect of salvation.

Some other folks can trace their roots way back. I would like to find some general connections in the least to my apparent Biblical ancestor Japheth, one of the three sons of Noah.

Regardless, we all stem from Noah and ultimately from Adam. While some readers of this GemLight might think he was a myth, the fact is every human is imperfect to some degree, even the nicest of us. The other fact is, when someone actually trusts in Christ to the point that Christ dwells on the inside of him there is a drastic change in that one’s imperfections greatly diminish as they continue to walk in Him.

What has happened is the person has accepted God’s Way to get us out of our mess and adopt us into the Kingdom of His dear Son. And there is no maze to get to the root. From Isaiah 53:2 we read, “For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground:...”

As we continue to read, we see in verse 4 and 5, “Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.”

While our human genealogy might be full of confusion, if we surrender to Christ our spiritual genealogy is full of blessing and reward.