Sunday Morning Meds--Heritage

C. C. and Neeltje Schaap

“May your deeds be shown to your servants, 

your splendor to their children.” Psalm 90:16

My Great-Grandpa Hemkes must have been the quintessential absent-minded professor. One Sabbath, before he came to America, he was so tied-up mentally with his theological meanderings that he nearly skated beyond the canals and out into the North Sea. His obituary suggests that, as a teacher, he was legendarily slack. Hmmm. But I also read that people considered him a grand storyteller. He lived to be 82, but he died of the diabetes he fought most of his life.

I can't help but find all of that somehow relevant, even useful.

His daughter, my Grandma Schaap, was an angel—and that reference comes from her own daughter-in-law. One characteristic of the Schaap family males is an almost unmanly sweetness, as if they’re a bit short on testosterone. That gentle character likely came from her. Grandma Schaap, I’m told, was never particularly healthy, but then she had ten kids, a not immodest sum in those days, of course.

Great-Grandpa Schaap tried to farm like millions of other Euro-immigrants in the later half of the 19th century, even though in Holland he was a seaman, a world traveler. But there was very cheap land in South Dakota, where he lasted just two years. He left Holland because the small North Sea island where he’d lived simply didn’t have a congregation of quite like-minded believers.

All of my ancestors—from immigration—were religious, very religious, which, when one considers the letters coming out of this computer right now—is itself a fact worth noting. I hail from a distinguished ancestral legacy of bedrock Christian belief in the Calvinist, or Reformed, tradition—and, of course, right now I'm meditating on Psalm 90.

But I’m sure some of those ancestors would wince when they’d read these pages. They carried convictions, placed stiff boundaries on Sabbath behavior, despised worldly amusements, and would have considered moving-picture shows, the descendants of which we watch nightly, the lusty work of Satan. They never danced, and if they played cards, it was likely Rook, on the sly. They meted out their love for the Lord almost militarily, created communities by preset codes of austere righteousness.

I am their child in many, many ways. I have no doubt at all that part of the reason I am writing these words is attributable to them and their faith. They are my heritage, and they were immensely pious folks. They are from whom I am.

But then, I am not my father, just as my son is not his.

Still, he’s got it too, my son, I mean—this predilection to believe. He has, just as I have, this goodly heritage, sometimes, his wife says, he can get more than a bit uptight. I want him to know something of his history and own it, for better and for worse. I'd like him to confess his faith in Jesus Christ too, to believe, as they, I’m sure, my great-grandparents wanted me to, even if they’d immigrated to glory long, long before I was born.

I know the impulse of this line from Psalm 90: “May your deeds be shown to your servants, your splendor to their children.” Every Christian does and has. We want those we love to know the Lord. It’s just that simple.

That hasn't changed.