I have something to admit. Although I am the daughter of a pastor, I have never been great at Bible trivia. Especially Old Testament trivia. When I looked through the list of names in Jesus’ family tree, I was reminded of that glaring hole in my knowledge and felt the familiar flush of shame as the whispers from my past chorused “Isn’t your dad a pastor? Shouldn’t you know this?”
After some Googling, some of the cobwebs cleared and I remembered the things that my literal lifetime in Adventist Education (not only elementary school through grad school, but my entire career as a Seventh-day Adventist teacher too) had taught me.
Ultimately, I chose Shealtiel. Before you fall into your own deep flush of shame, let me help you out. Shealtiel was the son of Jeconiah, who was exiled to Babylon after the first siege of Jerusalem in 597 BCE. He’s known as the second Exilarch: the second king in exile. There’s not much else to know about the guy. But even with just that one detail, I felt a sort of connection to old Shealtiel.
Shealtiel was a prince born into the promise of wealth and power. He grew up with expectations for what his life would be. Those expectations, however, didn’t quite play out the way Friend Shealtiel had planned. He was promised legacy and fame. Instead, we have to go into Google deep dives to even know who he is.
Life just didn’t work out the way it was “supposed to” for Shealtiel. And maybe this is a stretch, but as those were my first thoughts on the exiled never-king, I was forced to reflect on some of the ways my own life hasn’t been exactly what I felt I was “promised.”
As an older Millennial, I graduated from college at the height of the 2009 financial recession. To make matters worse, I was planning to be a teacher. According to the Los Angeles Times, that year, in the state of California alone, 26,500 teachers were handed pink slips. As a freshly graduated 23-year-old, I didn’t stand a chance. My husband and I got married that summer, three weeks after graduation. We moved to his hometown in Arkansas and got jobs working in food service.
Talk about not getting the life I was “promised.” And while the Cracker Barrel wasn’t Babylonian captivity and a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature is hardly a royal lineage, I think the parallel holds. Missed expectations land hard.
Every adult has a story of how life didn’t play out the way we thought it would. That’s just part of being a grown up. The romanticized version of the life you think you’re getting and the choices you think you’ve wisely and thoroughly considered simply don’t work out 100% of the time. I tell the teenagers who sit in my desks day after day that part of being an adult is managing disappointment and reevaluating your expectations.
And then there’s the old cliche, right? Sometimes the thing you get instead is better than what you thought you wanted in the first place. After all, I didn’t realize when I was working at the Cracker Barrel in Springdale, Arkansas, that I’d get a call that would lead me to my first teaching job that would bounce me from place to place in my own personal “wondering through the wilderness,” until I finally landed my dream job right back here in my hometown of Riverside. I’m a better human thanks to my exile into food service. 23-year-old me wouldn’t have wanted to hear it, but it’s true.
I have to wonder how Shealtiel dealt with his disappointment. Did he bemoan all the things he thought he’d have, but never got? Did he live a life of wealth even in exile or was he just another Hebrew in Babylon? Maybe I could find out with a bit more Googling, but the truth is that it doesn’t really matter.
In the end, he didn’t get to be a king, but he got to be a branch in Jesus’ family tree. This pastor’s daughter may not have absorbed a lot of Bible trivia, but I did learn a thing or two about how to find a good object lesson, and that one is pretty fantastic.
This season is filled with so much expectation. I think of last year and all the expectations that were lost. We missed seeing our families for the holidays and missed all the traditions we anticipate each year thanks to COVID. I think of all the things that are still so different and all the expectations that have had to shift.
There is so much in life that keeps us from realizing our expectations and Christmas is certainly no exception. For me, Shealtiel is just another reminder that even when life throws us off track from where we thought we’d be, there can still be a legacy left behind of something beautiful, and maybe even better than what we expected.
Lynsey Mize is the high school English teacher at La Sierra Academy. She is mother to 5th grade Lily and 2nd grade Harper and wife to Matthew who teaches in the Junior High. Her pastor-father, Mark Holm, was Youth Pastor at the La Sierra University Church from 1995-2000.