Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope

Shauna: I’m Shauna with Joni Eareckson Tada: Sharing Hope. Thanks for listening today. Joni, we know that you and Ken are reading all the way through the Bible, just like you do every year. I’m wondering, do you have any new insights to share?

Joni Eareckson Tada: Well, actually, yes I do, and it’s a little unusual. Last Sunday morning I woke up with a hymn on my mind. Out of nowhere, it was an old one, a hymn I had not thought of in years. As my helper was getting me ready for church, there I am singing, "Glory to His name, glory to His name. There at the cross was the blood applied. Glory to His name." My helper said, "Joni, I've never heard you sing that song. Where's it from?" I stopped and thought, "I don’t know." I said, "It just came to mind when I woke up." Throughout the rest of my routine, I’m singing, "Glory to His name."

Before Ken and I left for church that Sunday morning, as we always do, we read our Bible reading at the kitchen table together. That morning, our schedule had us opening to the book of 1 Chronicles. I quietly groaned because I knew that the chapters assigned to us were filled with genealogies, everybody’s genealogy. The first nine chapters are mostly that. I'll be honest, it’s hard to get through everybody's family tree. Going through names like Heber and Aram and Kedar and all the other sons and grandsons of Ishmael, it's not very exciting.

In the second chapter, we read familiar names like Reuben and Simeon, Levi, Judah, and the rest of the sons of Jacob. Exploring that family tree includes the sons of Judah. One of them called Er, who was wicked and died, but his wife Tamar then married her father-in-law Judah, who gave birth to Perez. Turn the page and there we are into the sons of David born in Hebron, and then his sons born in Jerusalem, and Solomon and Rehoboam and Abijah and Asa, Hezekiah and more.

Around the third chapter of reading this line of kings, I start hearing in my head, "Glory to His name, glory to His name. There at the cross was the blood applied. Glory to His name." I had to stop. This is why God put that obscure hymn on my heart that morning. Glory to His name, the name of Jesus. These genealogies in 1 Chronicles may feel distant from the blood of Christ, but they quietly trace the very line through which the cross becomes possible.

Especially the family trees of the tribe of Judah, the house of David, their descendants are the thread that leads directly to Jesus Christ. Without that preserved lineage, there is no Messiah rooted in history. Those genealogies are filled with some pretty wicked men, but it shows that the cross is not an abstract plan because those genealogical names represent the very sorts of people Jesus Christ came to save. That Sunday morning, after Ken and I finished our Bible reading with all those names, we went off to church in the van with me in the back singing, "Glory to His name."

Shauna: Oh Joni, how good of God to put this hymn on your heart that very morning. Yes, glory to His name, the name that is above every name. It’s what we love doing here at joniradio.org.