Deep in the....... Pedigree

More than just an odd title, I know and probably more than just a title in and of itself. I lead with "Deep in the"  followed by a series of "....." why? Well maybe to give you the thought that there is more than just "Pedigree" hidden in the title and well, lets face it, maybe not. I did in all honesty steal this title in part from a blog I am attracted to, one about horses.  I have fallen, unfortunately, in love with most of this author's writings; the way he identifies the love of the horses he writes about mostly because of their individual beauty that can carry from one generation to another. That's the truth about the blog.  What I don't believe he knows is that hidden in some of his writings I have found more than a connection of words.

The title where I stole my words is fully "True Beauty Lies Deep in the Pedigree", and for those of us who are horse people, true horse people, this statement is very true.We don't just see a horse when we meet a new one, we ask for their lines, their heritage.We want to know about the horses past, his or her ancestors. Why? Mostly because that history tells us more about the horse then the horse does about itself.  Believe it or not, we do this with people too. Go ahead try to have a friend and not know about their family current and historic, I'm gussing that's not an easy thing to accomplish. I probably know more about my friends families then I want or need too! So we search the horse, finding out who that animal should be, not what they are, we dig to find a historic pattern to the horse, despite all of the things the animal may be at that moment. We strip away all the distorted items and problems and get to the animal's basic core, the way they were designed from history, deep in the pedigree.
The theft of this partial title stems to a set of scriptures that I love, one set that I could read a hundred times and, from recollection, don't remember these few words:  Eph 3:16-19 "\I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being. So that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Saints, to grasp how wide and how long and how high and how deep is the love of Christ. and to know this love-that surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." I know these two seemingly odd things do not go together! They seem farther apart then anything I have put together before, or are they. These few scriptures seem to strip away the person that the writer is speaking to, the words don't go with the person's or persons' life at all I am guessing. (And yes, you can tell that I am far from a biblical scholar so guessing is the game.) But the author does not  say to the recipient, "don't be like this or that" "stop being what the circumstances have made you" and "I can't believe you are allowing the life you live to dictate who you are". And actually, I'm glad he doesn't say these things because that would immediately make the recipient throw away without reading the end of the long letter that makes up Ephesians.  What he does is looks past the person who is receiving the letter and goes deep within their history to find who they are in the core. The author looks at the deep rooted, inner being, not the flesh picture of the person receiving his letter, similar to what horse people do with a horse.

I believe somewhere in the mix of these two unlikely themes you see the point, far stretched as it may be, that I'm trying to find. The one that connects the two far fetched ideas and pulls them together and if you don't thats okay. Somewhere in the midst of the disconnected ideas is the point I'm trying to make and maybe thats not suppose to be the point that I need to make. But just like a horseman who looks at a horse and asks the owner for his life history and then his pedigree, I believe that God looks past the things that I am today. He looks deeper than what I am and what I have allowed the life I am in to make me and finds my true beauty deep in the pedigree (so to speak). And maybe I don't see it or know it and maybe I never will, mostly because it is much harder to find that in myself than in a horse, but that's okay. It is God who sees what lies deep, hidden in the lines that life has created, He, just like a horseman with a horse, knows that there is love, deep within, even if I can't see it.

I don't know if you are a horse person or if you can even relate to this similarity and it really doesn't matter. Mostly I hope that you see the connection between the two, an unlikely title that probably shouldn't end with "pedigree" and a scripture that looks farther than skin deep, both that look for the true beauty that lies deep in the heart.