{"id":5519,"date":"2026-06-19T08:20:36","date_gmt":"2026-06-19T12:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5519"},"modified":"2026-06-19T08:20:36","modified_gmt":"2026-06-19T12:20:36","slug":"a-thousand-generations-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/19\/a-thousand-generations-2\/","title":{"rendered":"A Thousand Generations"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

Parents are well aware of the fact that on any given day they are passing along more than just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to their kids.

Children are seemingly equipped with spiritual and emotional Velcro.\u00a0

They pick up our attitudes, our opinions, our biases, our hopes, and our fears.

And according to some\u00a0particularly daunting verses of Scripture, it’s clear they’re picking up far more than that:

\u201cI, the Lord, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing love to a thousand generations of those who love me and keep my commandments\u201d (Exodus 20:5-6).

What are we to make of this?

Everyone agrees that our kids are stuck with our DNA when it comes to height and hairline.\u00a0But does God really punish grandchildren and great-grandchildren for the spiritual performance of those who have come before them, with no hope in sight?

If we look a little more closely, we discover\u00a0something fascinating about\u00a0these verses.

Many psalms, proverbs, and poetic statements in the Jewish Scriptures\u00a0are expressed in something called Hebrew parallelism.\u00a0

A thought is presented in two lines.\u00a0We\u2019ll call them A and B.\u00a0Sometimes the two lines say the same thing, but in different ways.\u00a0Sometimes they compare and contrast opposite perspectives.\u00a0What happens when numbers come into play?\u00a0Line A will state a number, and line B will make it bigger.

Check out Proverbs 30:18: \u201cThere are three things that are too amazing for me, four that I do not understand.\u201d\u00a0From A to B we add one.

Let\u2019s try I Samuel 18:7: \u201cSaul\u00a0has slain his thousands, and David his tens of thousands.\u201d\u00a0The difference here is a factor of ten.\u00a0If we go back to the fourth chapter of Genesis, we find this dark threat by a man named Lamech (4:24): \u201cIf Cain is avenged seven times, then Lamech seventy-seven times.\u201d\u00a0The difference here is a factor of eleven.

Now that we\u2019re getting the hang of this, we can even make a poetic statement about how long it\u2019s been since certain\u00a0sports franchises have won championships: \u201cThe New York Knicks haven\u2019t won a championship since, well, last Saturday, while the Indiana Pacers have been also-rans for 53\u00a0years.\u201d

So, let\u2019s go back to Exodus 20.\u00a0Look at the difference between lines A and B.\u00a0Punishment for sin extends to the third and fourth generations.\u00a0But to how many generations will God show love?

One thousand.\u00a0<\/em>

The real message here is this amazing contrast.\u00a0There is nothing else like this in the Bible, where line B is multiplied by a four-digit factor.

Yes, God punishes sin. But God overwhelmingly\u00a0longs to show love.

Sins and frailties cling to the branches of every family tree on earth.\u00a0Generation to generation, we can see what happens when anger is mismanaged; when bitterness goes unaddressed; when sexual abuse, deceitfulness, and addictions are hidden in the shadows.\u00a0Children do indeed suffer for the sins of their parents.

But that is far from the whole picture.

On the pages of Scripture, hope always wins out for those who turn to the Lord.\u00a0We may suffer because of the mistakes of others, but that doesn’t mean we are\u00a0predetermined to repeat them.\u00a0\u00a0

“If anyone is in Christ, that person is a new creation.\u00a0The old has disappeared; the new has come” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

We can’t rewrite the stories of those who came before us.\u00a0But we can choose \u2013 beginning this Father\u2019s Day weekend \u2013 to join our own stories to the Story of the God who longs to show his love to us.

For when you change your story, you change your life.\u00a0

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here Parents are well aware of the fact that on any given day they are passing along more than just peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to their kids. Children are seemingly equipped with spiritual and emotional Velcro.\u00a0 They pick up our attitudes, our opinions, our biases, our hopes, and our fears. And… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5520,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1131,628,1132,336],"class_list":["post-5519","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-fathers-day","tag-generations","tag-paralellism","tag-parenting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5519","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5519"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5519\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5521,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5519\/revisions\/5521"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5520"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5519"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5519"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5519"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}