Today, I am reading and commenting on  Ezekiel 17-19.

Ezekiel begins chapter 18 by referring to a proverb spoken among the people:

The parents eat sour grapes,
and the children’s teeth are set on edge

This proverb comes from things like the fact that children abused by their parents are likely to abuse their own children.  Other types of abuse, bad behavior, and sin are also often passed down from one generation to the next.  As humans we tend to expect that the children of bad people will be bad people.  In a way, we expect that the children of bad people deserve the suffering they receive because their parents were bad people.  God tells us through Ezekiel that He does not see things that way.  God will judge each and every one of us on our own actions.  But there is more to it than that.  God will offer each and every one of us the opportunity to break that cycle of brokenness which we inherit from whatever flaws our parents had.  We do not need to continue the generational pattern of sin.  There is another side to that.  We don’t just get a free pass if our parents did not pass on some type of abuse to us.  And we don’t get to live off of the good behavior our parents may have instilled in us.  We need to actively serve God of our own volition as well.  My parents were devoted servants of God, who served Him in whatever task He put in their hands.  I have failed to live up to the standard they set, and I need to change that going forward.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.