Sermonstudio

Unless some things are carried from the past into the future, there will be no future worth having. That's what the Bible means when it tells us about Joseph's dying words: "And Joseph made his people swear an oath, 'When God remembers you with kindness, be sure to take my bones from here.' " (Genesis 50:25) Centuries later, when the Hebrews escaped from Egypt, the narrative says, "Moses took the bones of Joseph with him." (Exodus 13:19)

One thing we need to carry from the past into the future is a respect for the ancestors we have. That's how Will Rogers felt. When a snobbish member of a prominent New England family boasted to him that her ancestors came over in the Mayflower, Will, who was proud of his Indian blood, replied, "Yes, and my ancestors were here to meet them!" Among your ancestors are the noblest souls of our race: Moses, Plato, Mary, and Paul, and, above all, Jesus of Nazareth.

Another thing we need to carry from the past into the future is a respect for the ancestors we are. T.S. Eliot called this our "solicitude for the unborn." Educator John Dewey put it this way:
"The best we can accomplish for posterity is to transmit unimpaired and with some increment of meaning the environment that makes it possible to maintain the habits of decent and refined life." When a time capsule was buried in Long Island during the 1939 World's Fair in New York, the Bible was the only full-size book included. Authorities explained: "The Holy Bible, of all the books familiar to us today, will most likely survive through the ages. Therefore, the Bible that we placed in the Time Capsule will be sort of a connecting link between the past, the present, and the future." That's a modern version of the old Bible story about carrying Joseph's bones to Canaan. Unless some things are carried from the past into the future, there'll be no future worth having!