FOR THE SISTER WHOSE HUSBAND WORKS TOO MUCH

For the sister whose husband works too much:    Listen to a man praise his wife as the most important thing in the world.

And Adam said: “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh.  She shall be called Woman because she was taken out of Man.”   (Genesis 2: 24)

See how Adam praised his wife.  He affirmed their relationship as unique.  He declared that from now on her name would include his name because no one and no thing in their whole perfect world means as much to him as she does.

Neither Adam nor Eve had biological parents, so verse 24 isn't commentary.  It's prophesy.  Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined  his wife, and they shall become one flesh. (Genesis 2: 24)

God intended for husbands to give uniquely focused attention to their wives, attention that deliberately excludes everybody else, even your daddy and your mama.

So what's up with your godly man?   How do you get him to fulfill his prophetic role of paying attention to you?   You want some of that Genesis 2 love, don't you?

Let me help you, girl.

For women, attention is a sign of affection, and indication of genuine

love.  For men, attention is a result of shared purpose and camaraderie.

Your man, his clients, and colleagues work on the same projects, fighting the same  obstacles, and impacting each others' ambitions. That why he gives them his attention.

Good men are conditioned to respond negatively to people who try to distract them from their purpose. That's why he sometimes gets angry when you ask for more of his time.  His inner Adam tells him that he's supposed to tend the garden and name the animals, or whatever God has called him to do; and he interprets your need for attention as an attempt to move him off-task.

You and he share a unique relationship, a special love. Like no one and no thing else in the whole world, you have his heart.  But to get his attention, you have to share his purpose.

Which is how God intended it.  He designed the husband-wife relationship not primarily around romance but around shared purpose.

…In the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion… (Genesis 1: 27, 28)

Our human purpose is to be productive and to multiply until the image of God has dominion over all the earth. 

For a while in Genesis 2, Adam pursued that purpose all by himself.  Adam had a set of Divine rules and two jobs well before he knew what a wife was.  He was a good man, a man who embraced his purpose and its work.

Still, the Lord said, “It is not good that man should be alone” (Genesis 2: 18).  Not good because God didn't just want a man who pursues his purpose.  God wanted a family that pursues their purpose, and so God declared, "I will make him a helper comparable to him.”

God didn't create Eve to ease Adam's loneliness.  God created Eve to share Adam's purpose.  No.  God created Eve to share in purpose with Adam.  The man of the family should lead the in fulfilling the family's purpose, but that purpose  doesn't originate from the man.  Purpose comes from God. 

Sisters, if you want your man's attention, be the one he can share his passion with.  Be the sounding board for his ideas.  Working together, articulate your mission as a family.  Be his partner in that

purpose.

As his partner you can remind him that regular rest is also part of God's ordained purpose.  As his co-laborer in Divine purpose you can say, "WE need some time away from the work.  Let's (Let us) get away for a few hours or a few days."  As his partner in purpose, you can even help him schedule a romance Sabbath, when you decompress together.  You know:  date night. 

Adam recognized that he and Eve had had both been blessed with the same purpose.  She "got him." This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. 

Therefore:  because she is one with me in my work,  I prophetically declare that I will give her my full and unique attention.

Therefore, because she is my partner in purpose I know that she knows what I'm going through.  I can share anything with her. "And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed." (Genesis 2: 25)

As it was in the beginning, so it is now.

Share his purpose, and you'll have his attention.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

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#Awordtothewise

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE

Message #2 in the sermon series:  HEALING WOUNDED FAMILIES.  The title of this message is:  WHAT IS YOUR FAMILY SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE.

Listen well and leave a comment.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, visit the main podcast page at http://revandersongraves.podomatic.com/   

The podcast is on iTunes at https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/anderson-graves-podcast/id918990482

 --Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Bailey Tabernacle CME Church in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He writes the popular blog: A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email: BaileyTabernacleChurch@comcast.net

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar. 

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Bailey Tabernacle CME Church

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Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35403

INVESTING IN THE BOSS'S KID

I wrote this post 4 years ago, on the eve of my daughter's 16th birthday.  Tomorrow she turns 20, and what I said then is even more true today.

Tomorrow my daughter turns 16.  For the last couple of hours I’ve been looking at her picture and feeling all wet in the eyes.

Which made me think about Eliezer and Abraham. 

Genesis 15: 1-3 says that Eliezer was the chief servant in Abraham’s household.

The household of a Biblical patriarch was a lot like a family owned corporation.  For example, in the house of Abraham, the patriarch had more servants (employees) than actual relatives by blood or marriage.

Yet the entire household depended on one another.  Together they weathered storms and famine.  Together, they fought marauders and rival tribes.   Together they would either prosper or die in the Canaanite frontier.  And when God gave Abraham the sign of circumcision in Genesis 17, EVERY male in Abraham’s house became a Jew---- the hard way.

But you could say that was all just good business. 

You have to be nice to the boss.  You have to work together.  If the company (household) fails then everybody’s out of a job.  In Old Testament days, being “out of a job” meant death or enslavement, so doing a good job was simple self-interest.  Genuine love wasn’t necessarily part of the job description.

But sometimes it was.

Before Abraham and Sarah had children, Eliezer was the designated heir of Abraham’s entire fortune.  So when Isaac, the promised son, came along Eliezer had no objective economic reason to love the boy. 

But he did.

We know that Eliezer CARED ABOUT Isaac because Eliezer INVESTED IN Isaac.

In Genesis 25, Abraham sent his chief servant to research and negotiate a marriage-merger for his son.   This was a lot of trouble.  There was no match.com to sign onto, no Instagram full of selfies to peruse, not even a postal system to send letters asking, “Hey, do you know any nice single women around Isaac’s age?”

Eliezer had to take ten camels and basically wander around the sparsely populated Canaanite and Mesopotamian wilderness looking for “the one.” 

And if the woman is not willing to follow you, then you will be released from this oath; only do not take my son back there.”…Then the servant took ten of his master’s camels and departed, for all his master’s goods were in his hand. (Genesis 25: 8, 10)

At this point Abraham was old and Eliezer had power of attorney over the whole family business.  All he had to do was “not find” the right woman or ship Isaac off to Syria and he could have taken over the family.

But he didn’t. 

Instead, he risked his time, the peril of his own safety (wandering around the dessert with a caravan of provisions at his age), and his personal self-interest; and invested it all in his boss’s child.

^Then he said, “O Lord God of my master Abraham, please give me success this day, and show kindness to my master Abraham. (Genesis 25: 12)

In my career as an educator and pastor I’ve worked with, for, and over a lot of people.  Especially on faculties when I was a department chair or administrator (boss), teachers had an economic self-interest in being nice to me because I performed their evaluations and managed their personnel files.

They didn’t have to really love me.  They didn’t have to really love my house, my family.

But they have.

My daughter turns 16 tomorrow. When I posted the announcement online and looked at the range of people who commented and liked I realized how expansive my household has really been.

Over the last 20 years, teachers, counselor,  pastors, co-workers, colleagues, church members, and employees have invested in their time, their gifts, their favor, and their love in me, my wife, and our children. 

They have gone far, far out of their way to protect my children when I could not be there to protect them. 

They have prayed for my family.  They have looked out for my wife.  They have sought our good when our good wouldn’t do them any good.  They helped me and mine when undermining me would have been easy and profitable.

I know what you did.

You loved my house when you didn’t have to.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Subscribe to my personal blog  www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com .

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

You can help support this ministry with a donation to Miles Chapel CME Church.

You can help support Rev. Graves’ work by visiting his personal blog and clicking the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE END OF CONTENTMENT & THE BEGINNING OF PEACE

Blogging Exodus 2-3.

Then Moses was content to live with the man, and he gave Zipporah his daughter to Moses. And she bore him a son. He called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a stranger in a foreign land.”

Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.

So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush.

So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed.   Then Moses said, “I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn” (Exodus 2:21-3:3).

Moses had tried, but it didn’t work.

He’d tried to use his education to enlighten his people.  He’d risked his position and personal prosperity as an example of commitment to the cause.  He’d fought for them, killed for them.  He’d believed that if he told them and showed them and sacrificed himself for them then they would listen, and see, and rise up with him to take back their freedom.  Moses had tried to be a revolutionary.

It hadn’t worked.

So Moses left.  He put a (literal) thousand miles  between him and Egypt.  Met a nice Midianite girl.  Got married.  Adopted her dad as his dad.  Quietly took up the family shepherding business.  Had kids.  You know, normal life.  He’d been a son of pharaoh, a prince of Egypt but the whole time he’d been so angry.  In Midian he was old Jethro’s son-in-law, a husband and father, the shepherd.   In Midian Moses was content.

Then Moses was content to live with the man (Exodus 2:21).

Content means Moses didn’t feel like something was missing in his life. He didn’t sense the absence of a greater destiny.  He’d gotten past all that change-the-world, save-my-people stuff.  He was good.  No, really.  Fine as he was.

Then God set a bush on fire.

And the Angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. . . .  God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses! . . .  Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt” (Exodus 2: 2-4, 10).

And Moses told the Lord, “No, thank you.”

The next 29 verses (Exodus 3:11 – 4:17) is Moses making excusing and God refuting Moses’ excuses, until Moses finally says point blank,  “O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send” (Exodus 4: 13).

Basically, “Send somebody else.  I don’t wanna go.”

I understand Moses.  I understand how it feels to be genuinely and truly OVER IT. 

You get tired of repeating the same truth to people who say, “Amen” and then live like they don’t know what truth is.   You get tired of pulling all-nighters to figure out solutions for folks who begged you to figure out a solution, but when you offer the solution they say, “Who made you a prince and ruler over us.”   You get tired of fighting Pharaoh for your people AND fighting your people to get them to fight Pharaoh.    When you realize that “your people” ain’t gonna lift one finger to protect you from bankruptcy, stress-related high blood pressure, student loans, strained relationships in your own house, or Pharaoh’s guards ---- then you might decide to put as much distance as you can between them and you.  You might decide to just be husband, father, and local shepherd.  You might not even miss trying to be a revolutionary because you might actually be content. 

Now godliness with contentment is great gain (1 Timothy 6:6).  

But then WHY IS that bush STILL on fire?

Because GOD was not content.

Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage.  And God  heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.  And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them (Exodus 2:23-25).

600-plus years after the promises to Abraham, God’s people were still His people.  400 years after Joseph, 4 centuries of being addicted to life Pharaoh’s Goshen, 4 generations of forgetting who they were and Whose they were ------ God’s people were still His people.  And the Lord had not given up on fulfilling His promises to His people. 

Your people don’t stop being your people.  

Your calling to your people doesn’t cease to be your calling to your people.

And no matter how genuinely OVER IT you are, the fact that you still draw breath means God is not done with you yet.

When Moses said “O my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else You may send” it pissed off God. 

So the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses (Exodus 4:14).

And God made Moses go back to Egypt ANYWAY. 

They keep calling and emailing you, don’t they?  

You deliberately missed all the meeting and they still want you to work on the project.

Your social media feed, the commercials during your favorite show, that song that made you weep on the way to church, that radio sermon that almost made you pull over on the way to work, even the advice you hear coming out of your mouth to somebody else . . .

I said, “I will not make mention of Him, nor speak anymore in His name.”  But His word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back, and I could not (Jeremiah 20:9).

 Now, you understand some things you didn’t before.  Now, you’re not naïve about how easy the war will be.  Now, ironically, when you don’t want to lead anymore, you’re ready to lead. 

And yeah, you have reasons and excuses and 29 verses worth of prior engagements and conflicting obligations, but guess what? 

You’re still gonna go.

You’re not going to change God’s mind about your calling.  You might piss God off.  But you aren’t going to change His mind about your destiny. 

For I am the Lord, I do not change; therefore you are not consumed, O sons of Jacob (Malachi 3:6).

You still doing what God called you to do is the reason you are still around to do anything.  You might as well accept it.

So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, “Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see whether they are still alive” (Exodus 4:18a). 

You’ve had your season of contentment on the sidelines.  Now the only place you’ll find peace is back in the middle of the game.

And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.”  (Exodus 4:18b). 

If the blog moved you, listen to this message from our Exodus preaching series.

If you can’t get the audio on your device, use this link:  WHEN GOD DOESN'T LEAVE WELL ENOUGH ALONE (audio)

--Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

THE RICH LADY AND THE POOR BABY, more lessons from the childhood of Moses

Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?”

 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the maiden went and called the child’s mother.

Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. (Exodus 2: 7-9)

God is clever, really clever; and He has a heckuva sense of irony.  The  family whose state-mandated genocide had forced Moses’ mother, Jochebed,  to abandon him: that same family HIRED Jochebed to nurse him.  Pharaoh’s money paid Moses’ mother to be Moses’ mother.  And, since she was working for Pharaoh’s daughter, her family, while enslaved,  would have been given the the protection and favor of the king.  God found a way to turn their enemy into their patron. 

God can and does use the people who hurt you to deliver help you.

But, benevolence and patronage did not change the rulers' sense of ethnic superiority.

When Moses was around 3 years old, his mother had to bring him to servant’s entrance of the palace, hand him over to Pharaoh’s daughter, explain to her baby boy “This is your mother now,” and then . . .  then she had to walk away. 

And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. So she called his name Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2: 7-10). 

On the one hand, Pharaoh’s daughter was doing her part to mitigate the suffering of the oppressed minority. 

She had seen a little Hebrew boy abandoned by his parents, but instead of calling the police (I mean the palace guards) on the boy so he could be killed like the others, she sent for a wet nurse.   In a world that had normalized the murdered bodies of Hebrew sons, this most privileged member of the most privileged majority had compassion. 

The daughter of the evil king might turn out to be a decent person. 

On the other hand, unexamined privilege creates a kind of social blindness which makes you look stupid to the un-privileged.

When Pharaoh’s daughter discovered baby Moses floating in the reeds, she accepted the offer of a Hebrew wet nurse without question.  A wet nurse is a lactating woman hired to provide breast-milk to another woman's child.  The fact that Jochebed was lactating meant either she had an unweaned child of her own or she'd recently given birth. A few questions along the lines of basic interest in Jochebed's story would have revealed that she had birthed a child 3 months earlier, but the child was now "gone."  Either the child had died from sickness or been murdered on Pharaoh's orders.   

If the princess had cared to hear the poor, disadvantaged Hebrew woman's story, she might have realized she was asking/ ordering a woman still grieving her own child to  breastfeed a baby who would be taken from her as soon as he was off breast-milk.   Pharaoh's daughter was compassionate but she was also blinded by her privilege.  She didn't see the insensitivity and ignominy of her intervention in the minority community.

Pharaoh’s daughter probably thought she was doing the community a favor.  

The baby wouldn't be their child anymore, but he was alive. 

On the other hand, he wasn’t their child anymore.  

People born into social, economic, and ethnic privilege forget that the "favors” for which “people like them” should be grateful are only necessary because of the political, economic, and literal genocides ordered by their fathers.   Amram and Jochebed, poor and imperfect as they were, were fully capable of rearing Moses without the princess's patronage, if his very existence didn't  trigger a lethal response from the “helpful” authorities of the state.

On the one hand, Moses would grow up with opportunities no Hebrew child had known since the days of Joseph.  He would be educated by the greatest tutors of the age, trained in politics, the sciences, the arts, philosophy, mathematics, and military strategy.  He would always have plenty of food, the best clothes, and the latest chariots.   A slave baby left in a river would be called a prince of Egypt.

On the other hand, Moses’s parents didn’t even get to choose their youngest child’s name.  Pharaoh’s daughter called him Moses, so it didn't matter what name had been given him at birth.  They had to teach him to answer to “Moses.”   After a few years of  government aid  the the Women Infants and Children in Amram's and Jochebed's houshold, the system took Moses from his mother and gave him to the rich Egyptian lady who wanted him.

For centuries, White people in America and Europe “saved” Native American, Black, African, and Asian babies by taking them from their “disadvantaged” families and raising them as their own.    

On the one hand, being willing to love a child born by a stranger from a foreign culture indicates a heart of deep compassion.  That's godly love.    

On the other hand, millions of those foster and adoptive parents felt it was their Christian and/ or American duty to save those colored babies from all the heathen vestiges of their inferior birth culture whether the babies' parents wanted them saved or not .

Link to article

Because of compassion, Pharaoh's daughter wanted to give the poor, cute Hebrew baby a better life.  But because of her PRIVILEGE, she didn’t confront her father about the conditions that made being a young Hebrew male so dangerous.   

Ecclesiastes 3:9-10  ⁹       That which has been is what will be,

That which is done is what will be done,

And there is nothing new under the sun.

¹⁰             . . .It has already been in ancient times before us.

From the princess’s perspective, she was adopting a poor minority baby and giving him a good life.  From Moses’mother’s perspective, the government had tried to kill her baby and when that failed they came and took her baby away. 

Pharaoh’s daughter was oblivious to her privilege.  But Moses’ mother and sister were not.  They understood that she didn’t understand, and they did what the underprivileged have always done.  They used the social blindness of their oppressors to their advantage.  Moses’ family  gained 3 or years with the child they expected to mourn 3 months after he was born.  AND they got Pharaoh to pay for the childcare. 

Somewhere in those 3 scammed years of being a whole family, Mama and Miriam  indoctrinated Moses with an un-shakeable sense of his Hebrew-ness.  They built a connection to the community that stayed in Moses through all the years of assimilation and indoctrination in the palaces of the king of Egypt.

Moses’ family were oppressed and exploited, AND they were smart enough to outwit the royal family.  Pharaoh’s daughter was genuinely compassionate AND she was obliviously privileged. 

3 Lessons to Take Away from the Story of Baby Moses:

1.   No matter their social class, people are complicated.  

2.  The privileged are not as smart as they think they are, and the “under-classes” are not as dumb as they’re thought to be.

3.  Compassion is a perfect starting point, but compassion isn’t the end of the conversation. 

--Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

Friend me at www.facebook.com/rev.a.t.graves

Follow me on twitter @AndersonTGraves 

Click here to support this ministry with a donation.  Or go to andersontgraves.blogspot.com and click on the DONATE button on the right-hand sidebar.

Support by check or money order may be mailed to 

Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064

DADDY ISSUES, a lesson from Moses' childhood

blogging Exodus 2

Moses was born into the tribe of Levi, the clan that would become the hereditary priesthood of Israel; but when Moses was born, the Levites weren’t priests.  They were the minor clan descended from a disgraced ancestor (Genesis 49:5-7) among a community of slaves.  Moses and his siblings were spiritually anointed.  The eldest, Miriam, became a prophetess; Aaron, the middle child, became the first high priest of Israel; and Moses, the baby, was . . . well, Moses! 

But family life wasn’t all prayer meetings and praise services. 

First, they were all slaves.  And,  on top of that, Daddy was basically an absentee father. 

Moses’ MOTHER hid him from Pharaoh’s death squads.  Moses’ SISTER followed the basket floating down the Nile.  They arranged to keep Moses until he was weaned.   But Daddy?  Amram, Moses’ father, didn’t fight Pharaoh’s guards when they came to investigate reports of an infant birth.  He didn’t help hide the baby.  From the information in Scripture, Amram didn’t do anything.

Maybe he was emotionally disconnected.  Maybe he was worked so hard by his Egyptian overseers that he couldn’t participate in home life.  And maybe slavery broke him.  Maybe they so completely whipped away his hope that he couldn’t even find inspiration in the lives of his children. 

Does this sound familiar?

Don’t believe the lie that broken families is something new to to our times or unique to our ethnicity.

The Bible reports that enslavement and ethnic oppression are designed to breaks men.     When the spirits of the men are broken, women HAVE to step up.  Matriarchy isn’t a new  or progressive paradigm for the family.  Matriarchy is basic survival for oppressed peoples.  

Despite all of this, Miriam, Aaron, and Moses became the leaders of a movement that emancipated a nation of slaves and composed the foundational texts of the Gospel.  Moses’ story proves that the children of brokenness don’t have to become the parents of brokenness. 

To overcome the brokenness you inherited, you have to acknowledge your parents’ sins as sins.     

Exodus 6: 20 states that Moses’ father and mother were nephew and auntie.  

Now Amram took for himself Jochebed, his father’s sister, as wife; and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of the life of Amram were one hundred and thirty-seven (Exodus 6:20).

Up to this point in the Old Testament, marrying such close relatives was uncommon.  Jacob and Isaac married cousins.   Abraham and Sarah were half-brother and sister. 

Yeah, I know.  Eww.

At one point, while dictating the Law to the children of Israel in the wilderness, Moses the great prophet said: 

 The nakedness of your sister, the daughter of your father, or the daughter of your mother, whether born at home or elsewhere, their nakedness you shall not uncover. . .   You shall not uncover the nakedness of your father’s sister; she is near of kin to your father. You shall not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, for she is near of kin to your mother (Leviticus 18:9, 12-13).

That's a euphemistic way of saying:  God doesn’t want men  hooking up with their aunties. 

Moses looked at his family, listened to God, and said to his people:  God made my sister, and my brother, and me in His image.  He protected us, filled us with His anointing, and called us to leadership.  We are not mistakes.  But the way our parents got together, the structure of their relationship?  That wasn’t right.   The founders of our nation did great things and were mightily blessed.  But the structure of their relationship?   That was sinful. 

Good things came from it.  Great people came from it, but that doesn’t make it right.     

God freed Israel from slavery and said to them, “Now that you’re free be better than your ancestors were.”

This was a hard truth for Moses to speak.  A hard truth for me to speak.  You see, my daddy didn’t always do right, but the Lord says that my siblings and I are not mistakes.  He loves us.  He blessed us.  He brought us thus far along the way, but He does  want us perpetuate the same dysfunction in which our forefathers lived.

It’s a difficult thing:  to confess that you, your family, or maybe even your entire nation was conceived in sin and shaped in iniquity. 

Difficult but necessary. 

Moses’ story shows us that generational greatness requires us to learn our my fathers’ sins, not repeat our fathers’ sins.  We need to stop encouraging our children in lifestyles that political pharaoh and spiritual pharaoh designed to break our people. 

We celebrate survivors.  We honor the  strength of our sisters who did what had to be done when their man wouldn’t.  We glory in the beauty and potential of our children, regardless how they became our children.  And we teach our children the truth so they and all our descendants can walk into their best lives because of the kinds of families they built not despite the kinds of families they built.    

--Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church in Fairfield, Alabama. He writes a blog called A Word to the Wise at www.andersontgraves.blogspot.com

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P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064