The night before my grandmother sold her estate, I got a call from the family. "The family heirlooms are going to disappear in a public sale. Can you drive there and get the best stuff before it goes?"

So a friend and I drove through the night, arriving in the early morning to a crowd of people picking over the family belongings. We bought back some pieces of furniture - an old couch, a chest of drawers, a few other things.

"I didn't think it was fair to the family to distribute it all," Grandma said. "How would I know what to give to who?"

Inheritance - we don't talk about it much. For many of us, it's a mysterious, nebulous thing. If you're a young person, it's pretty much beyond your ability to control. Raise the subject and you may appear greedy or presumptuous. If you're an older person, you may think about the subject a lot, but feel reticent to talk about it. Arouse expectation in your heirs and their sense of entitlement may grow and sap their work-ethic. Better to keep it a surprise than risk its curse.

Mostly we see it done poorly in the Bible. Esau's greed prefigured that of the prodigal son. Both dishonored their parents and suffered the consequences. Stuff got in the way of relationship and produced the bitter fruit of family strife.

There is a sacred transaction that occurs between one generation and the next, but it has to do with the spiritual, not the physical inheritance. Moses led the children of Israel to the Promised Land, but it was the freedom that land represented, that was significant, not the property itself.

We all stand to receive something, whether good or evil, from our parents. And we in turn will leave something to our own kids. It may be hard to talk about, but the spiritual exchange needs more intentionality.

What spiritual inheritance did you receive or do you expect to receive? What inheritance do you want to leave behind? Who do you want to leave it to? We should talk.