Take Back Your Family 5-Day Plan Намуна

Quick question: Can you even name one great-grandparent? I’ve only met a few who can, but even they couldn’t name a great-great-grandparent. I personally can only name one and have only met one of my grandparents.

Yet if you ask most Jewish people who their great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great (you get the idea) grandfather is, no matter where you are in the world or what country they are living in, they’d say Abraham. They know where they came from.

In fact, God seems to care about this too—so much so he actually chooses as one of his primary names and identities when speaking to his people a name that has to do with family lines. He says, “I am . . . the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

Notice that when God himself wants to communicate his very identity, he doesn’t choose a trait—like “God the powerful” (even though he is)—he specifically ties his name to a generational line.

We want families to be built to last. But everything we do points to them being built to fail, built to fracture, built to implode, built to self-destruct.

It is just absurd to spend decades building something and then purposely self-destruct it. Yet in families we do this all the time. It’s even considered a virtue! One practical way this plays out, but I think is a really good metaphor for all of life, is with inheritances. In our culture it’s almost seen as an evil to give your kids an inheritance—it’s enabling, setting them up for failure, and stripping them of an ability to mark their own way. And if this doesn’t reveal our culture’s absolute value of independence being the highest form of virtue, I don’t know what does.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for reminding me that you are my God and my Father in heaven. Please help me to build a lasting legacy in my family so that we serve you from generation to generation. Amen.