Here’s the text for the 9 September 2024 “Pause for Thought” I offered on the Breakfast Show with Scott Mills on BBC Radio 2. Listen here.

Ten years ago I was living in Chicago and travelled to Memphis, my hometown, to visit my Grandma, who was dying. We sat on her sofa with a box of old photos ­– and picture by picture, we gossiped about our family tree.

There was an old-fashioned, sepia-toned photograph of a man, in a natty suit, on a street-corner. I asked: “Now who’s this handsome guy?” She said: “Well, that’s my grandfather, Frederick Schulz – so your great-great-grandfather, who immigrated from Germany in the 1800s.”

The photographer’s address was stamped on the picture-frame: it said 111 North Lasalle Street, Chicago, 1894. I said: “Grandma! That’s like a block from my flat – I walk by there every day! But I thought our family came from Kentucky, not Illinois?” “Eventually Kentucky,” she said, “but fresh off the boat, Frederick lived in Chicago.”

I honestly I hadn’t thought much about my great-great-grandpa until then, but that picture stoked a connection with him. Because of a common city: Chicago. And because of our common lineage: he’s been dead for more than a century now, but something of his blood ­­– his story, his life – makes me who I am.

I also feel connected to him because I’m a migrant, too. I’ve moved from Memphis to Chicago for work, and then across the ocean, to Britain, for love.

I saw a church banner once that said: The sign of God is that you’ll be led, where you did not expect to go. True for Frederick Schulz, and true for me.

The Bible contains some lengthy genealogies. So-and-so-begat-so-and-so-and-on-and-on-and-on. In my opinion, sort of boring … but when I think of my great-great-grandpa ­– or when I look at a picture of me and my beloved grandma, who’s been dead more than a decade now – those biblical family trees hit different.

I feel included in this great lineage of love. Included in generations of life-beyond-death. From God to Adam and Eve, as the story goes. To Isaac and Ishmael, to Mary, Joseph and Jesus – all the way to now, including ancestors whose names I’ll never know but who make me who I am.

For me, that ancient ancestry proclaims that before we human-beings had different religions and surnames and national borders, it was just us and God. I forget that sometimes – disconnected from modern migrants, people today, like Grandpa Schulz in 1894, boarding boats in search of a different life. But when I forget, the Bible reminds me: God has made us all one family, and will lead us, together, where we didn’t expect to go.