dysfunctional much?
This account reminds me of a lot of people I know personally. They have a non-traditional (but what does that mean anyway, seriously?) family situation, they are at odds with their siblings, maybe they have a half-brother or a dad that really screwed things up or whatever.
So their family is basically their enemy, but when somebody important dies it acts as an impetus to reconnect, even if it's just in temporary cooperation, to bury their family member.
It's beautiful and tragic at the same time I think. But the story of Abraham tells us that people are the same now as they were back then. Broken, selfish, hurting, begrudging...but at the root, there is still that part of us that desperately wants to reconnect or honor or pay respect to where we came from when we know it's permanent.
We see within the next few verses that the brothers lived at odds with each other the rest of their lives, and we can look at any news broadcast just about any day of the year and see the descendants of Ishmael and Isaac still in conflict with each other. But for that short time, they worked together.
Is that dysfunctional closure? Bury your dad. But don't bury the hatchet.
Created 8 months ago
