I’ve reached that stage in life where I catch myself repeating stories to the same people. (mostly our grown children) I catch myself, but I rarely stop myself, because family stories are important and are worthy of repetition. Plus, you never know when some important detail will emerge that had been skimmed over in previous tellings.

Some of my reverence for story comes from those boring begats in the Bible. Eber begat Peleg; Peleg begat Reu; and Reu begat Serug. Those lists.

If you read that particular list closely (and with a calculator), you will discover this interesting fact: Abraham was forty-nine years old before his many-greats-grandfather Noah died. Can you imagine? The most famous children’s story in history – Noah and the Ark – alive and breathing around the picnic table at family reunions?

Maybe they didn’t even know each other, of course. Maybe they lived at opposite ends of Mesopotamia and never traveled the same trade routes. But surely Abraham knew the stories. Surely someone in his lineage told him about how God talked to old Noah and allowed him to become the father of a new civilization.

If I’m right about that, it doesn’t seem too big a jump to think that Abraham who believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness learned some of that lesson from a relative named Noah who was the only righteous man in his day.

My stories are not quite as dramatic as Noah’s, but I’m going to keep on telling them.  Feel free to tell me if you’ve heard this one before. But, I’m telling it anyway.