1 Chronicles 2:18-24: a reflection

18Caleb the son of Hezron became the father of children by Azubah his wife, and by Jerioth; and these were her sons: Jesher, Shobab, and Ardon. 19Azubah died, and Caleb married Ephrath, who bore him Hur. 20Hur became the father of Uri, and Uri became the father of Bezalel. 21Afterward Hezron went in to the daughter of Machir the father of Gilead, whom he took as wife when he was sixty years old; and she bore him Segub. 22Segub became the father of Jair, who had twenty-three cities in the land of Gilead. 23Geshur and Aram took the towns of Jair from them, with Kenath, and its villages, even sixty cities. All these were the sons of Machir the father of Gilead. 24After Hezron died in Caleb Ephrathah, Abijah, Hezron’s wife, bore him Ashhur the father of Tekoa.

This genealogy runs through Caleb's family, name after name, and most readers pass over it. But one name in it is worth stopping for: Uri, the father of Bezalel. Bezalel is the man God would later fill with his Spirit and with skill, ability, and craftsmanship to build the tabernacle and its furnishings, the artisan of God's dwelling. And here he is, quietly produced through the ordinary generations of a family.

Notice what that shows about how God provides. When God needed a gifted craftsman to build his sanctuary, that craftsman did not appear from nowhere; he came, in the ordinary way, through a family line, born and raised in a particular household, carrying particular gifts. Through the quiet, unremarkable succession of generations, God was bringing forth exactly the person, with exactly the abilities, that his purposes would require.

There is a reassuring providence in that. God works through the ordinary fabric of families and generations to raise up the people he will need, with the gifts he will use. Your own gifts, your skills, your place in a family line, are not accidents; they may be part of how God is providing for purposes you cannot yet see. And the ordinary genealogies of our lives, the marriages, the children, the passing of one generation to the next, are the very means through which God brings forth his Bezalels. Offer your gifts to him, and trust that he raises up, through ordinary lives, exactly whom his work requires.

Lord, through ordinary families and generations you bring forth the gifted people your purposes require, as you brought forth Bezalel. Help me offer my own gifts and skills to you, trusting they are not accidents but part of your provision, and to see the ordinary fabric of my life as a means through which you work.