Every Generation Left Me Something

Your grandmother left you the church. Not the building; the going, and the being the one who is relied on there, which she was for forty years and which passed to your mother and then to you without anybody discussing it.

Your father left you the money side. He never said so. He simply stopped being able to do it and you started doing it, and now three people ring you about their affairs and one of them is not even family.

Your mother left you the keeping-in-touch. She was the one who knew everybody's news and passed it on, and when she stopped there was about four months where nobody rang anybody, and then you began.

And your generation has added its own. Your sister's boy, who is not your responsibility and who nobody else is doing anything about.

Every one of those is real. Not one of them was imposed on you by somebody being unreasonable, and every person who handed one over was doing their best and mostly did not know they were handing anything.

They are honorable, all four, and you would not want to be the sort of man who resented them.

They also, added together, are more than any one man carries, and you are the one man.

What this page will not do

This is the closing category and its rule is that nothing is added. There is no system for managing the four coming, and no better way to hold them.

I am not going to say a word against your grandmother or your father or your mother. Not one of them did anything wrong and all three were carrying their own version of this.

I am not going to tell you to walk away from your sister's boy. That is a live thing with a real child in it and you would not do it and I would not ask.

And I am not going to tell you that family obligation is a cultural burden you should be free of. That is a fashionable thing to say and it is usually said by people who have nobody ringing them, and it is not what you want.

What is here is one thing put down and nothing put in its place.

You are not resentful for noticing the weight. Scripture says the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart, Psalm 34:18, and nearness is not withheld from a man who has counted what he is carrying, and the Holy Spirit is in that courtyard beside a chair nobody sits in.

The verse has somebody carrying daily

There is a line in Psalm 68 whose second half is translated two ways, and both of them are worth having.

Blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, even the God of our salvation.Psalm 68:19

The words underneath it can be read as loadeth us with benefits and can equally be read as beareth our burden, and translators have gone both ways for centuries because the Hebrew genuinely carries both.

Take the second reading for a moment, because it is the one for you.

Who daily beareth our burden.

Daily. Not once, not at a crisis, not in a large single act of deliverance. Every day, as a matter of routine, in the same way the sun comes up.

And beareth, which is a carrying word, and which puts somebody under a load rather than beside it.

That is the offer. Not that the four obligations become three. Somebody underneath them, daily, as an ordinary arrangement.

You are not underneath this alone. Scripture says blessed be the Lord, who daily loadeth us with benefits, Psalm 68:19, and the same words carry the sense of one who daily bears the burden, and the Holy Spirit is the one already under a weight that arrived from three generations.

Why none of them can be refused

Because each one is small at the moment it arrives.

Nobody ever said: will you take on being the person the church relies on. It was a favor, then two favors, then a role, then forty years.

Nobody said: will you take over the family's money. Your father asked you to look at one thing.

And nobody says: will you be responsible for a boy who is not yours. Somebody rang you about him once, because you were the one who would answer. It is written, in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes what is written off a page and into a life.

Each arrival was a yes to something reasonable, and the refusal would have looked unreasonable in the moment, and that is how three generations end up in one man.

That is not a failure of boundaries. It is what happens to whoever is dependable in a family where things need doing.

You are not obliged to be the whole family's capacity. Scripture says every man shall bear his own burden, Galatians 6:5, and it stands in the same chapter as bearing one another's, and the two together describe sharing rather than transfer, and the Holy Spirit has never once assigned three generations to one back.

What is put down

One. Chosen by you.

Not the boy; leave that where it is, and it is the one that has a person in it.

One of the other three. The one that is most nearly finished, or the one you least believe in, or simply the one you would most like to be free of, which is a legitimate criterion and one you have never allowed yourself to use. Scripture settles that in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit is the one who carries it rather than these words.

Say out loud what it is. Then say that you are handing it back, and mean the handing rather than the resenting: this was hers, and she carried it well, and it is not mine. I am not putting my own idea over you; Scripture says it in Psalm 68:19, and the Holy Spirit is the one who makes it live.

You may still do it next week. That is allowed. The thing being set down is not the task; it is the ownership, the sense that it is yours in perpetuity because nobody else will.

And do not go and organize a replacement. Do not ring your cousin and delegate it, do not build a rota, do not have a family conversation about fairness. Every one of those is a new thing to run.

One named out loud. Nothing arranged.

You are not required to hold a thing because you are the one who would. Scripture says come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest, Matthew 11:28, and the rest is given to whoever is carrying rather than to whoever has arranged their affairs correctly, and the Holy Spirit is not waiting for a fair distribution before He carries anything.