Matthew 1:11

Matthew's Gospel opens with a long genealogy — a family tree tracing Jesus's ancestry all the way back to Abraham. This verse is one entry in that list: King Josiah was one of ancient Judah's better kings, remembered for leading a major religious reform. His grandson Jeconiah (also called Jehoiachin) was on the throne when the Babylonian Empire invaded, burned Jerusalem, destroyed the temple, and forcibly deported the Jewish people — an event known as the Exile to Babylon, one of the darkest moments in Israel's entire history. Matthew includes this catastrophe in Jesus's family tree without apology or explanation. He is not skipping the hard parts. He is showing us that God's story moves through them.

God, you wrote your Son's name into a broken family tree on purpose. Remind me today that you do not require a spotless history to show up in someone's life. Here is mine — all of it, the parts I am proud of and the parts I am not. Use it. Amen.

Family trees are uncomfortable things. We tend to curate the ones we share — mentioning the great-grandmother who survived immigration, quietly leaving out the uncle nobody talks about. But Matthew sits down and writes out Jesus's entire lineage, including the Exile. He does not footnote it. He does not soften it. "At the time of the exile to Babylon" — right there, in the genealogy of the Son of God. The Exile was catastrophic. Jerusalem burned, the temple fell, an entire people were carried away humiliated and scattered. And Matthew puts that in the family tree. This is not an accident — it is a theological statement. God does not require a clean record to keep a promise. His covenant moves through conquest, through shame, through generations of broken things. Whatever is in your story that you are afraid might disqualify you — whatever exile, whatever failure, whatever painful chapter — it did not stop God's line from running forward. It never does. The genealogy of grace has no asterisks.