Stone Siblings From Hell

Because Allen Means Stone!

    

    Biological connection does not make a family, love does. That was in very short supply in the family and home in which I grew up in, due to the fact that my parents despised each other.  They never taught us to love each other or anyone else. My mother taught us to hate everyone, my father taught us to love only ourselves. I'm not saying they indoctrinated us with that, I'm saying they lived that out before us.

     I used to be covetous of other families whose siblings were loving and intimately close friends, while mine were only related by blood. Once every ten years or so, they'd be a family reunion of sorts for some special occasion, and I always dreaded going, because I knew what I would be facing. I was always the odd man out, and the older I got the odder I became, to them. The closer I became with YHVH GOD the less I was liked by them.  It's to the point now, where I am not even welcome to a family funeral, and not only am I not welcome, but my children are not welcome, either.   

    I have looked at this picture hundreds of times over the decades, and I never noticed that I am "set apart" from the rest of them.  They are all in relatively close contact with each other, and I am off to the side a bit, I am the odd man out.  That never occurred to me before this moment.  Kodesh/Kadosh are Hebrew words that mean "SET APART."  The English Bible translators translated those words as holy.  Holy to most church people means pure, clean, good, and yet that is nothing like what the Hebrew word means.  The Hebrew words do not always translate properly into English, because Hebrew words have so much more depth to them than the English. Christians have misused and mistranslated the word holy for centuries. It simply means, SET APART. Something could be set apart for a good use or even a bad use. Someone can be set apart to do a work for GOD and some people could be set apart to do an evil thing, all for the purposes of the growth of the Kingdom of GOD or a person's spiritual growth and health.

     Having studied the Bible as a means of survival these past decades,  I have observed a lot of sibling dysfunction. The very first sibling rivalry ended in murder.  Cain, out of his jealousy for Abel's being favored of GOD, killed him, for no other reason than jealousy and hate.  Jacob and Esau were a mess because their parents pitted them against one another by favoring one over the other. Most of the Biblical heroes were not well-liked by their siblings, they were SET APART by GOD for His special purpose.  David is a perfect example, the "runt" of the family, and quite possibly not even from the same mother as the other seven, according to ancient Hebrew tradition.  It has been thought by ancient Rabbis that David could have been the son of an adulterous woman or even a prostitute,  None of that is in the Bible, but it does make sense, seeing how he was definitely the family reject. 1 Samuel 17 tells it all. (28 Eli’av his oldest brother heard when David spoke to the men, and it made Eli’av angry at him. He asked, “Why did you come down here? With whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is! You just came down to watch the fighting.” 29 David said, “What have I done now? I only asked a question.”)  

     Many times, the set apart one is called the trouble maker, is the hated one for no other reason than there is something different in them.  Jacob's son, Joseph, was just that kind of brother.  His brothers  were so full of hate they had no regard for how losing Joseph would devastate their father.  Their stone-hearted hate was more important to them then their father's heart of flesh. They had no remorse when they lied to him, telling him that his precious son was eaten by a wild animal, and bringing back only a bloody tunic. They were never convicted of their guilt, until such a time as near twenty years later when they were in a bind, and it occurred to them that this was their punishment for what they did to Joseph and their father.  Sadly, some family members are never convicted about their ill-treatment of the "set-apart" one. 

     GOD doesn't see the ugly others see, He sees a set-apart one.  Even if that set apart one is living in very ugly and not so pure circumstances.  YHVH GOD knows what He will be doing with His set-apart ones, and we are judged based on what His plans are, not the mistakes we make.   

    Even Jesus had a few renegade brothers who thought Jesus went mad by calling himself the "Son of GOD. (Mark 3: 21 When his family heard about this, they set out to take charge of him; for they said, “He’s out of his mind!”). I love Jesus response, which was basically, he dissed them in public, and they well deserved it. Jesus did not do it with malice, but with truth in love. Jesus said, in a nutshell, biology means nothing, but those who belong to GOD are my true family. 

      So, although, I have been envious of other families and their closeness, in a way, I'm glad that I grew up in the house of "stone," full of hate and rivalry, at least that's all I ever felt from them. When I was twenty-six-years-old, GOD changed my stone heart to flesh, (Ezekiel 37), and as the years passed, He blessed me with eight children of my own, two more than my mother had. Although, it is never pleasant to be rejected, falsely accused and blamed for everything from one's siblings, I was the one of the six who YHVH GOD set-apart.  I was the one called to a special work for Him, while they just revile me more and more each year. The key here is to always see how YHVH GOD sees us, not as man sees us.