Emphasis Preaching Journal

A young teenager was rummaging through some old family records in a closet. He came across something that took his breath away. It was a birth certificate with a court document attached. It had belonged to his grandfather and the name on the birth certificate, a German name, had later been changed by a judge. The new last name was the name that had served as the family name and eventually found its way down to him. Quickly packing the documents back into the box and shoving them into the closet, the boy hurried downstairs. He was quiet and his face ashen. They had studied about Germany during World War I and World War II. Inside he wondered, "Had my grandfather been some sort of war criminal? Had the name change been to escape some terrible deeds that his ancestors had been involved in?" The boy's father could tell that something was wrong. Asking him, the boy poured out all of his fears. When he was through, the boy's father chuckled. "Your grandfather was no criminal. But when he was eight and his sister was eleven, his biological father ran off and had an affair with another woman. Later his mother remarried and her new husband, the man I knew as my grandfather, adopted the children. The name change reflected that adoption." All these years and the boy had never known. An adoption two generations ago had brought the name to the family. The name had become his name. It would be the name that he passed down to his children. The connection was so tight that it functioned as blood, yet it all started out as an adoption -- an act of grace to make right that which was wrong before.
-- Daubert