Inheritance
It came into focus when I got a large box of photos from Dad's house after he died. They were all photographs of him and his family when he was young ( lots of black and white pictures of him as a teenager with his friends etc) and then lots of James and I as small kids and of his life with Barbara. These photos were really of no interest to Marion so I was happy to take them and sort them out. But as I was looking through them I realised that quite a lot of them should have gone to Barbara's two sons after she had died back in the 1990s. There were some primary school reports belonging to her youngest son which I was sure he would want to have back , and lots of photographs of her family and her young life. So I parcelled them up and sent them off - and received a reply a few days later thanking me for them - those pictures were part of a family history which wasnt really mine.
I am probably one of the first of a generation who have grown up with fractured, blended, re-constituted families who are now coming to a stage of life where sorting out the inheritance is going to be tricky. I have five step-siblings from three different marriages, none of whom I really know terribly well and all of whom have an investment in the lives of my parents. Thankfully all of them are very nice and reasonable people and there arent going to be any pitch battles over who gets what at the end of the day. But I can clearly see how contentious it could be for families who have competing agendas, or loads of wealth to divide or downright animosity between different parties.
Inheritance is important to God. We not only inherit physical characteristics and tendencies from our parents but we might inherit their life's work and worth. What they pass on to us might give us a step up in life - or it might leave us a legacy of some sort of family history or treasured memories which tell us where we have come from and who we are. When we inherit - be it a vast fortune or grandma's teapot - we are reminded that we are part of a family narrative which goes back generations. And we are reminded that we were loved. The Bible is full of fathers blessing sons and imparting things to them. Fathers giving inheritances and genealogies being recounted. God, I think, does not want us to forget who and what has gone before. We are instructed to recall the things He has done for us and our forebears - to keep those stories of His faithfulness going and being passed on down the generations . I have a family Bible passed down through generations of my family since the early 1800s. Somewhere we have very early gramophone records of my granny singing. There has been faith and music in my family for hundreds of years. And it continues. Which is pretty amazing I think. As well as the photographs, the other thing of my Dad's I have is a box of toy soldiers he collected as a child. All of these will be passed down to my boys eventually and I hope they pass them along the line in turn.
I wonder if the increasingly complicated relationships of modern society are going to disrupt that sense of generational continuity and financial security which inherited things bring. We lose something important if we lose our story. You only need to watch Long Lost Family to understand something of the deep seated need in people to know where they have come from and to whom they belong. I suspect that as the world becomes more crazy and unstable our desire to hold onto our stories - especially our stories of faith - will become all the more urgent. Now is the time for us to be thinking about what we are going to pass on to the next generation. Who we want to have what, and why. Anybody reading this who is under the age of 40 will probably think Im nuts. The rest of you will probably be thinking about re-writing your wills 😂
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