Eight years old and it’s the middle of summer. A bowl of Cheerios, a piece of toast, and you’re ready for a morning of outdoor play. What will it be today? A pick-up game of sandlot baseball? Exploring in the woods, down by the stream, looking for tadpoles and crayfish? Maybe you took a canteen and lunch in your army backpack so you wouldn’t have to go back home. Or maybe not.
After lunch, what? More baseball? Perhaps playing army? Whatever, before you know it, mom’s calling for supper. And then back outside. Hide and seek? Tag? Kick the can? It lasts until dark. As you fall asleep, it probably doesn’t even occur to you what you’ll do tomorrow.
When you’re eight, you don’t give much thought to the future, unless of course something big is planned, like going on vacation or to a professional ball game or to Six Flags. Or maybe your birthday or Christmas. You just pretty much live today, and, to misapply a Bible verse, “take no thought for tomorrow.”
When the years pass and your age doubles, hopefully the future holds more interest. Need to start thinking about vocation, continuing education, life beyond the last two years of high school. Unfortunately, some sixteen-year-olds still live as if they’re eight, and trouble surely awaits. But most don’t.
Before you know it, graduation is right around the corner. In April, the soon-to-be graduates are fixated on the future—walking across the platform, getting that diploma, and saying farewell to Whatever High. And by then, they better have some kind of a plan beyond that! Fortunately, most do.
For the next forty years of life, thoughts of the future typically revolve around retirement things. When will I retire…where…will I have enough of an income…what will I do with myself with all the free time (shuffle board just isn’t my thing!)?
Then What?
What about beyond that?
I’m not referring primarily to the afterlife, but while one has “today” he better prepare for eternity. Only two options for where that will be spent! Turning from a life of sin—the fruit of a heart of sin—and turning to Jesus the Savior, trusting Him for eternal salvation, is the only good option.
What I’m getting at in taking us through childhood, adolescence, and into adulthood—and how the respective phases of life consider the future (or not)—is prompted by an Iroquois maxim.
“What would be good for the next seven generations?”
How many of us, even when reaching middle age or older, make decisions with that question in mind? Os Guinness, in his book Carpe Diem Redeemed, contrasts modern man with the Iroquois, noting “…Americans think only of the business quarter or the next election cycle.” He’s talking about everyday life, that is. We do give thought beyond that—to retirement, right?
But even in making plans for the post-career years, how much thought is given to “the next seven generations”?
What kind of issues would I focus on if I thought seven generations out? What would I do differently today? What would my “bucket list” look like?
How would state and federal legislators plan budgets, incur debt, and establish obligations if they thought beyond the immediate supposed need or the next election?
Here’s an interesting twist. I read an interesting article about Moderna, one of the preferred pharmaceutical companies working on a vaccine for COVID-19. In simplified terms, the vaccine will modify your DNA code so your body will generate “stuff” to kill COVID-19, and you won’t have to suffer from the flu. But, the article pointed out, there’s no going back, and your body’s genetic code will be passed down to future generations. Here’s the kicker. No one knows the long-term generational impact of that genetic manipulation. But we do know it’s incredibly risky and poses the potential for great harm.
The Native American Iroquois would be aghast at such a thing. I’m quite sure they’d say, “Hey, wait a minute. Potentially harm my grandchildren and theirs just so I don’t get the flu? Um, I don’t think so! I’ll pass, thank you.”
An Ancient Approach
This way of thinking—generations into the future—is also biblical.
Remember Jacob as he approached death? He considered it an essential process to bring his sons together and, one by one, tell them what was coming in their future generations. Then, before he died, he made them promise to bury him back in Canaan where he’d buried his wife—not in Egypt where they currently lived (and would live for the next 400+ years!).
Why did he do that?
It wasn’t just for sentimental reasons, like, he wanted to be buried where Leah was buried, as well as his parents and grandparents. There was more to it than that. God had promised that land to Abraham, Isaac, and his descendants. He also promised that his descendants, though living in Egypt, would return to Canaan. Jacob therefore peered far into the future; he wanted to be buried in the land his people would eventually call home.
“What would be good for the next seven generations?” he wondered.
It would be good for them to keep Canaan in mind…to remember that’s where grandma and grandpa are buried…that’s the land God promised them…to long for it…to look for the opportunity to return.
Dad’s way of thinking transferred to the next generation. Several years after Jacob died, his son Joseph—the premier of Egypt—saw his dying day. He gathered his family together and declared,
“God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.”
“What would be good for the next seven generations?” he wondered.
Keeping a Godward focus, remembering his promises, looking forward to the fulfillment of a long-held dream of possessing Canaan, looking beyond Egypt and their current relative comfort—all would be good for generations to come.
And they never forgot!
Four centuries later, when Jacob’s and Joseph’s descendants are suffering humiliating bondage, slaves abused by cruel taskmasters, the words of Joseph echoed through the years. “God will surely visit you,” he said.
“Lord, will it be soon?” they pined.
Then came Moses, declaring God sent him to deliver his people and take them to the land of promise, the land where Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were buried. And somewhere kept in safe keeping, a place of some prominence and easily accessible, were the bones of Joseph.
Generations earlier, he had looked ahead and insisted when this day came, this generation would carry his bones with them to their promised home. Generations earlier, he chose to forgo the pomp and ceremony of an Egyptian burial, the mummification and interment in a monolithic mausoleum. Instead, he looked seven generations and more into the future and chose what was best for them.
What About Us?
What would this look like for us? For our families? For our communities and states and nation? What can I do in my brief lifetime, what can I say, how can I live to help the generations after me focus on God, His Word, His promises, His future world?
Now’s the time to be asking, “What would be good for the next seven generations?”
