Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then Abram said to Lot, ‘Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, September 19, 2020
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Sometimes you just gotta go your own way. Abram and his nephew, Lot, had been traveling together for a long time. They’d managed to amass a whole lot of animals along the way, and now they were competing for grazing land, and things were getting tense. Family drama. You know how it is.
Lot wasn’t Abram’s son, but I get the definite feeling here of what happens when it’s time for a kid to leave the nest. Teenagers and young adults often clash with their parents, and it’s necessary for said youth to establish their own boundaries and identity, so they actually can go out and adult.
As a parent, it’s hard to let go. Hard to see the human beings you’ve nurtured since they were tiny, immobile blobs only capable of taking in nutrients and returning them in a wide variety of bodily substances (I don’t miss the spitting up!) suddenly grown. But as many, many parents have told me, once you do separate, the relationship changes and grows in beautiful ways.
There’s plenty of room out there for everyone’s sheep. May we all herd in peace.
How did my relationship with my family change when I went out on my own?
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