turn the hearts

The Old Testament ends in an unusual way.  These are the last prophetic words before 400 years of relative silence: See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful Day of The Lord comes.  He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents, lest I come and smite the earth with a curse (Malachi 4:5-6).

This Word from God is both an invitation to parents and children to turn their hearts to one another and a warning if they do not.  Ever since 400 B.C., we've seen both the amazing blessings of reconciliation within families and family trees and the terrible curse of broken families, generation after generation.  We would do well to accept God's invitation and heed His warning.

But as someone who has been both a child and a parent, I wonder if this Word might also apply to us in both ways.  There was a long season in which my heart was hardened towards my parents for various reasons, mostly my selfishness.  Continuing to turn my heart away from my parents should have set me up to do the same with my children.  Hard-heartedness seems to spread up and down the generations.  Thankfully and painfully slowly, with God's help, my heart turned back toward my parents in repentance and forgiveness, and that same heart, therefore, turned toward my children.

This turning of my heart continues, even as my parents are now dead and my children are now grown.  Hardness of heart is rife in our culture, and it seduces us to turn our hearts away from the most significant people in our lives, and it spreads on from there.  This is the curse that has smitten us.  May God give us the grace to allow Him to keep on turning our hearts toward Him and toward the most intimate people in our lives.