Genesis 26:34-35

When Esau was forty years old, he took as wife Judith, the daughter of Beeri the Hittite, and Basemath, the daughter of Elon the Hittite. They grieved Isaac’s and Rebekah’s spirits.

Sometimes, when our children grow old and start to make decisions on their own, we are surprised and saddened to discover that they choose a path that we would not have imagined a child of ours would take. I believe that, in some cases, this is caused entirely by the environment that the now growing or grown child finds themselves in. In many cases, errors in how we as parents raised our children enter into the mix as well. The sorrow and pain a parent feels when their child goes in a bad direction stays with that parent. There’s sadness that perhaps better parenting would have helped, as well as fear for their well being. Isaac and Rebekah understood those feelings and they are some of the few emotions highlighted in the Genesis record.

How wise it is to learn from God how to be a good parent and live out that righteousness in power by the Holy Spirit so that you don’t have to deal with the pain that this can bring. We should not show favoritism between our children as Isaac and Rebekah did. I believe that it had an effect on the parenting of both of their sons. Fortunately, they taught their son’s about God too and that appears to have also had an effect as we see later in the record.

It is interesting that in Galatians, the Bible tells us not to grieve the Holy Spirit. Each one of us, as Christians, can choose to wander from God and do things that God doesn’t want us to do. God never disowns us as Christians, but He feels the deep sorrow caused by so many of His children wandering away from the life that He made them for. All we need to do to get back on track is to confess our sin and trust in the Holy Spirit to help us do what is right starting right now and we will heal the relationship and learn that God has always had our best interests in mind.