Transatlantic and transpacific...

If you're reading this blog post during the last weekend of February, chances are I'm sky-high in a plane somewhere, or hanging around in an airport waiting for my next flight. I fly on Friday from Malaga to Edinburgh, then backtrack to Amsterdam before crossing the Atlantic Ocean and the entire USA to Seattle. A couple of hours later the last leg of my journey sees me crossing the Pacific Ocean to the little town of Kona, on one of the Hawaiian islands. I'll arrive on Saturday night, Kona time, which is Sunday morning European time.

After a few days of rest (it seemed a pity to go all the way to Hawaii without building in a few days of holiday) I'll be busy for two weeks with KKI international leadership team meetings, as well as some faculty meetings with the University of the Nations. Thanks for your prayers during this long trip and this busy time of ministry meetings.

Writing for a reason...

Have you ever wondered why, when God wanted to reveal Himself to the people of Israel, He so often chose to do it by writing? The ten commandments were written on tablets of stone, the warning to Belshazzar was written on a wall, the prophets were told to write things down in a scroll or on tablets, and some of the first teachings of the early church were written in letters to the believers.

Our faith hinges on the truths written in God’s book, which is in fact a whole library of books. In fact, the only thing better than God’s written Word to us was when He came Himself in the flesh.... and even then He was also called the Word: “ the Word became flesh and lived among us.” (John 1: 14)

So if writing was so important to God throughout the Old and New Testament era, I guess we shouldn’t be surprised that He still calls people to write things today. I seemed to have an unusual amount of writing tasks in my schedule during these first two months of 2016: ministry manuals, university papers, home preparation materials for summer outreach… Some days I spent so much time writing, that I began to have a feel for what it must be like to be a full time author!

I'm so pleased that everything on my list is completed now. My goals was to finish all those writing projects before leaving for my first trip. Praise God, I finished the last paper today, and I leave for the airport first thing tomorrow morning.

The good news is that I generally enjoy writing. As a friend pointed out, why else would I write more than 55 entries in my journal and some 33 posts on this blog, when I was already spending so much of my working day on different writing tasks?

I've finished my two month journey through the book of Genesis now, and I trust you've enjoyed reflecting with me on the lives of some of the characters in that first book of the Bible. I've certainly enjoyed reading your comments and reflections sent to me by email. Thank you… and may God bless you as you continue to meditate on his word during 2016. I encourage you to write down some of your insights and discoveries. It's amazing how encouraging it can be to read them again at the end of the year.

It all depends on your perspective...

In Genesis 47, when Pharaoh asks Jacob how old he is, Jacob's reply (verse 9) is, "My years have been few and difficult. I have travelled this earth for 130 hard years."  It's true that Jacob didn't have an easy life. While much of the hardship was due to his own fault and lack of character, it still must have been hard to flee from home because you'd made your brother angry enough to want to kill you. It must have been awful to be deceived by your father in law on your wedding day. How devastating it must have been to think that your favourite son had been killed by wild animals. And now, in your old age, to be a refugee, leaving your own country because of famine.

But in the next chapter, when Jacob is blessing his grandsons, he sees his life and sees God from a completely different perspective. In Genesis 48: 15 he says, "May the Lord, who has been my Shepherd all my life to this very day, the Angel who has rescued me from all harm, bless these boys."

Yes, his life has known hardships and struggles, but now when he looks back at the entirety of his life, he is able to say, God has always been with me, He has always taken care of me,  He has protected me from all kinds of harm. Remember that Jacob and his sons after him had been shepherds their whole lives. They knew what it meant to care for sheep: the investment of time, and the willingness to put your own life on the line to protect them from attack.

We all know the famous words of David, when he wrote in Psalm 23 that the Lord was his shepherd. We know the famous passage in John chapter 10, where Jesus describes Himself as the good Shepherd. But here already, in the very first book of the Bible, we find Jacob acknowledging that God has shepherded him throughout his whole lifetime.

Yes, Jacob the deceiver, Jacob the rebel, Jacob who described his life as, "130 hard years," is the same man who, seventeen years later, when he chooses not to focus on the hard and the negative, can say in all sincerity that he's always known the protection of Jehovah Rohi, the Lord our Shepherd. It all depends on your perspective.

The cross-handed blessing...

In Genesis chapter 48, as Jacob is reaching the end of his life, he calls in his son Joseph and explains that he wants to bless his two grandsons, Manasseh and Ephraim. These two boys were Joseph’s sons that had been born in Egypt, and something rather intriguing happens as Jacob reaches out to lay hands on the boys. Joseph has positioned them so that Jacob’s right hand will touch Manasseh and his left hand rest on Ephraim - presumably because the right hand was for the older son and was symbolic of the greater blessing.

For some reason, Jacob crosses his arms and places his hands differently, so that his right hand rests on Ephraim and his left hand on Manasseh. What prompted him to do this? I can think of one or two possible reasons, but that’s for a different blog post at a different time. Instead, what stood out to me in my reading this morning was a rather encouraging parallel that this account brought to mind.

It struck me that we don’t need to fret and fear that we’ll miss out on a blessing if it seems like life’s circumstances have put us in the “wrong place.” If our hearts are right before the Lord, God is able to “cross his hands” and reach out to bless us, right where we are.

I think, for example, of people who leave the mission field they were called to, and go home to look after an ageing parent. I think of friends of mine who recently had to leave the Middle East and return to their home country so that their youngest child could get care for a rare and degenerative form of autism. I think of missionaries whose visas are denied, like the many who were thrown out of Morocco a few years ago. I think of myself when damage to my lungs meant that I had to leave Austria, right at the point when I was about to make a longer missionary commitment there...

That illness seemed to take me away from my calling and put me in the “wrong place.” Yet, little did I know that the move would put me on the trajectory that has largely shaped my life’s journey until today. My many years in Africa and now in Spain were built upon the foundation of those unexpected years in Scotland in the 1990s.

God is not limited by our geography. When life’s circumstances appear to knock us off track, He can nonethess “cross his hands” and make sure that we receive His blessing right where we are. As I wrote in Tuesday’s blog post, He will be with us even in our “Egypts” and nothing - nothing except our own wilful disobedience - can prevent Him from blessing us.

Another incredible encounter (3)

In previous blog posts (see 14th February) 
I reflected on Jacob’s two God-encounters at Bethel and Peniel. In the first four verses of Genesis chapter 46, we read of another encounter that Jacob had in his old age, and it was at Beersheba, the well of the promise.

The Bethel encounter saw God reassuring Jacob as he was forced to flee from the land of his inheritance. The Peniel encounter saw God preparing him to return, and re-affirming the promise. Now, a couple of decades later, Jacob is having to leave the country again, and not only himself this time, but with his whole family - all the descendants who were to inherit the land. If you’ve read the story of Joseph in the previous chapters, you’ll know that Jacob’s family was having to move to Egypt in order to survive in a time of famine. Jacob knew it was necessary - it was leave or die - but what must he have been thinking as he set off once again to leave the land that had been promised to him?

When the huge tribe reaches Beersheba and stops for the night, God speaks to Jacob in a vision. Not a dream this time. It seems Jacob has grown in his relationship with God, and can hear His voice without God having to bypass his conscious mind. The Lord, who saw and knew Jacob’s troubled thoughts, begins by saying, “Don’t be afraid to go down to Egypt.” Don’t be afraid to walk away from the land that I’ve promised you. Don’t worry that you appear to be turning your back on your inheritance.

Next comes a part that probably astounded Jacob - when God says, “.. for I will make your family into a great nation there.” What? The promise would actually be fulfilled in that hard, foreign place? Surely a “nation” is a group of people in a specific location.

But there’s more to being God’s people than being in a particular geographical setting - just as there’s more to being a Christian than sitting in church on a Sunday morning. Being part of God’s people, part of His “chosen nation,” is more about who you are than where you are. It’s about how you live your life and how you see God. And so God tells Jacob that Egypt, a place seemingly distanced from what the Lord has promised, is the very place where He will make them into a nation.

A devastating illness, a change of circumstances, a loss of some kind; all of these things can feel like “Egypt” to us. (I think of my Dad spending nearly a year in hospital, or a colleague whose young daughter dropped dead with an aneurysm, or my neighbour whose mother’s deterioriating Alzheimer’s stole her from us at a terrifying rate.) There are many situations and circumstances in our lives that can seem to be taking us away from the fullness of God’s blessing. Yet these things, hard as they are, may be the very place where God does something great in us, and for us. The key lies in our never letting go of the truth that God’s presence is with us in that situation. The very next thing God says to Jacob is, “I will go with you to Egypt,” and in whatever circumstances we face, He also says to us, “I am with you.”

Finally, in the last part of the vision, God tells Jacob two things that sound contradictory: “I will bring you back again,” and “You will die in Egypt.” Of course, the seeming contradiction is explained by the fact that the first “you” is the plural, collective you: God will one day bring Jacob’s descendants back to the land He promised them. The second “you” is the individual, personal you: Jacob as an individual will never leave Egypt; he is saying goodbye forever to the inheritance that God has repeatedly promised him. Hardly surprising if we consider that he was a very old man by this time.

But it’s not all bad news, because something special is offered in return for Jacob’s sacrifice: he is first going to be reunited with the son that he hasn’t seen for more than twenty years, and then in death he will see face to face the God that he has slowly been learning to know through dreams and visions, mistakes and miracles, hard lessons and wonderful blessings. Dying in Egypt doesn’t sound quite so bad, when you think of what Jacob would experience as well.

The reality of life is that we don’t always live to see the complete fulfilment of all that was promised to us. Sometimes it’s a future generation that sees the blessing and fulfilment of the things that we were trusting God for. If we have lived our lives well, we can “die in Egypt” like Jacob did, knowing that our legacy will live on and our promises will become reality. As we read later, at the end of chapter 47 and the end of chapter 49, Jacob may have died in Egypt, but he wasn't buried there. His final resting place (for his bones, at least!) was indeed in the land that God had promised him.

Mostly in life, when we find ourselves in tough times, we can hang on to the fact that “this too will pass.” When some horrible situation, some family tragedy, or some personal crisis catapults us into Egypt, God assures us, “I will go with you, and I will bring you back out of it again.” The hard things in life seldom last for ever; it may feel like it at the time, but it’s only temporary in the light of eternity, and God promises to bring us through the storm, bring us safe and stronger out the other side. As I wrote in a previous post: don’t judge the book  by a chapter. God alone knows the end of the story and is able to work all things out for our good.

But sometimes, just occasionally, there are those who do “die in Egypt.” They never get healed from that terminal cancer; that rocky marriage does end in divorce; that illness does cause us pain or rob us of mobility; that longstanding conflict never gets fully resolved... In such situations, God remains unchanging; He’s not fazed by the drama and He reassures us that one day He will welcome us into the final chapter of all; then we too will see Him face to face.

Birthday babies

Yesterday was Tobi and Teddi's seventh birthday! I can't believe that the time has gone by so fast. Have I really lived here in Alhaurín for seven years?

Little did I suspect, when I was playing midwife at midnight (read here) that two of those babies would still be with me seven years later. And I still have the mother, Tamba, too, by the way.

If you'd spoken to me ten years ago, the truth is I never expected to be living in Spain… and I never expected to have a household of cats. Life has a way of taking us by surprise. I wonder what surprises lie in store over the next seven or ten years.

Not the end of the story

This morning I was reading in Genesis chapters 39 and 40, the well known account of Joseph’s trials in Egypt. Joseph is a Bible character who has long been an inspiration to me because it seems that, despite his early immaturity in Genesis 37, he was a person who consistently sought to make right choices, and we read over and over again that, “the Lord was with him."

Joseph’s story is told in just a few short chapters of the Bible; only two or three chapters span the time from when he was a 17 year old till the time he was 30. A few further chapters bring us to the end of Joseph’s lifetime, and so we all know the end of the story; we know that things began to turn around for him when he was thirty. (Gen 41: 46) But the previous thirteen years were pretty awful: hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, falsely accused of rape, forgotten in prison...  Again and again, Joseph was the victim of tragedy and injustice. Yes, we’ve read the last chapter and we know there was a “happy ending,” but what must Joseph have been thinking and feeling when events had only half run their course? It says a couple of times in chapter 39 that God blessed Joseph and gave him success.... but I guess that might all seem kind of relative, if your “blessing” is happening in the context of slavery or of wrongful imprisonment.

The thing that has always stood out to me, however, is that Joseph never seemed to slip into self pity, bitterness, anger, or simply giving up. Did he keep holding on to his God-given dreams or did he abandon them, believing them to be impossible now? Either way, he seems to have kept holding on to God, and this seems to have enabled him to bring the very best out of every situation he found himself in - no matter how awful or injust or just plain wrong it was at the time.

A danger for us is that we look at our lives right here and now, and we evaluate them as if they were already the last chapter of the story. What’s happening in my life right now is not the whole story of my life; it’s just a snapshot, only one chapter among many. If it happens to be a really hard or horrible chapter, that shouldn’t be allowed to eclipse the fact that very many good chapters went before it, and (if I’ve consistently made right choices in life) more good chapters will still come after it.

An old proverb says, “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The lesson I learn from Joseph’s life is, “Don’t judge the book by a chapter.” Don’t judge your life, or judge God, on the basis of the one chapter that you find yourself in today. If, like Joseph, we hold on to God and hold on to right attitudes, the last chapter of our story will look very different from the one we find ourselves in today.

Incredible encounters (1)

The book of Genesis tells of several encounters between Jacob and God, but two stand out as having particularly marked the course of his life. It’s probably like that in our own lives, too. Hope-fully we’re meeting with God every day... but every now and then there is an insight or experience that stands out from the rest. Jacob’s “incredible encounters” both happened at critical transition times in his life. The first was when he was fleeing in fear from his homeland and the murderous wrath of his brother. The second happened twenty years later when he was, probably just as fearfully, returning home again. Jacob was a single man, probably in his forties, at the time of the first encounter, and a married man with many children at the time of the second. Both happened at night time, though, so that Jacob was completely alone when he met with God.

The first encounter is related for us in Genesis chapter 28. You’ll remember that after deceiving his father and brother, Jacob left Beersheba and began the long journey (more than 450 miles) to Haran, where his parents’ relatives lived. I wonder what thoughts and emotions filled him on this long, lonely journey. He was leaving his heritage and his family’s land of promise; had he forfeited his inheritance by deceiving his seemingly dying father? Would he ever see his mother again? Would his twin brother pursue him and try to kill him? Would he ever live in safety again? Had he gone and sabotaged the blessing that he’d gained by trickery, and pretty much messed up everything?

With such worried thoughts and insecurity about his future, it’s not surprising that Jacob was exhausted by the end of the first day - tired enough to fall asleep with his head on a hard stone for a pillow. And so it happened that God spoke to Jacob in a dream. Some people nowadays might dismiss it as “just a dream,” a product of his own troubled and wishful thinking. But people in Jacob’s day, just like many non-western cultures even today, were very aware that dreams are one of the ways God bypasses our confused thinking in order to speak to us. In this instance, Jacob has a vision of the interface between heaven and earth, with God and angels involved in the drama.

The part where God speaks must have been particularly meaningful to Jacob. Here he was, fleeing from his homeland and wondering perhaps if his own actions had caused him to forefeit the inheritance that God had promised to his father and grandfather. So the very first thing that God says to him (after introducing Himself as the God of that father and grandfather) is, “The ground you are lying on belongs to you.” Then God goes on, in the middle part of the dream, to repeat basically the same promises that He had given to Abraham. After that comes the postscript, the “what’s more” in verse 15: “I am with you and I will protect you wherever you go.” For someone fleeing the vengeful anger of his brother, someone travelling alone and potentially at the mercy of any bandits en route, that part must have been a real relief and reassurance for Jacob.

Isn’t that just like God? He doesn’t simply give Jacob the same message given to his ancestors, the story that Jacob had probably been hearing since he was a small boy. Instead, God sandwiches the promises between things that Jacob really needed to hear in his present situation and predicament:

a) you may be leaving it for now, but this land is yours
b) no matter how far away you go, I will still be with you to protect you.

God is not a God of formulas; He’s a God who speaks personally to the needs and fears of every individual. He didn’t stop there, however; after that (vs 15b) came the cherry on the cake: “One day I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you before I have finished giving you everything I have promised you.”

Wow! What a dream. No wonder Jacob woke up with such a strong sense of the presence of God in that place. And, perhaps for the first time in his selfish and wayward life, Jacob is also filled with the fear of the Lord - with a holy respect for who God is. The next morning, Jacob sets up a memorial stone (using the big stone that had been his pillow during the dream) and he gives that place a new name. It used to be called Luz  (which, rather appropriately, means “separation”) but Jacob renames it Bethel, which means house or home of God. He may have been separated from his family, but Jacob was about to begin a journey where he would no longer be so separated from God, a journey that would lead him to the place where he would finally begin to allow space for God to make a home in his life.

Jacob makes a vow (vs 20 - 22) and from his own lips we hear the evidence that the Lord has never truly been his God before now. We sometimes make the assumption that all the Bible characters were lifelong followers of God; but here is Jacob, a man already in his forties, admitting that he has never fully been on board. He’s been selfishly living his life according to his own rules. He makes a solemn declaration that, if God does in fact do these things He has promised, then Jacob will really make Him his God.

Jacob being Jacob, opportunistic as ever, hasn’t completely shaken off his self-seeking tendencies, however, and can’t resist “padding the promise” a bit. In addition to what God actually did promise (presence, protection and bringing him home again), Jacob adds his own clause: “If He will provide me with food and clothing.”  I can imagine that God just smiled: it had always been His pleasure to provide for His people anyway.  God is so gracious: He meets us where we are and accepts us as we are, even when our approach is a little clumsy or disrespectful at times.

Maybe Jacob remembers this, because he adds an extra facet to his own side of the commitment: as well as acknowledging God as his God, Jacob commits to tithing: to giving back to God a tenth of everything that God gives to him. Even in making this vow, Jacob is still speaking of God in the third person (and not yet speaking to God), but it’s definitely a stake, or a stone, in the ground. Jacob has encountered God personally and his life will not continue to be the same.

Keep reading in the post below, to fast forward twenty years and read about another of Jacob’s incredible encounters with God.

Incredible encounters (2)

The Bible mentions several other times that Jacob met with God or with angels during the many years that he was in exile from his homeland... but the next encounter that’s described in detail is the one that we read of in Genesis chapter 32. It’s been twenty years since Jacob experienced God at Bethel and made a vow to follow Him in the future. A lot has happened over those two decades, some of it very good and some of it very bad. Now Jacob is heading home to the country and the family that he has not seen for such a long time.

He’s feeling very nervous about seeing his brother again. Having a twin is just about the closest relationship you can have on earth, but instead of looking forward to a joyful reunion with a soulmate, Jacob is feeling fearful that his brother might still be angry with him, still harbouring thoughts of revenge for what was done to him. He must have felt even more afraid when his servants gave him the news that Esau was on his way to meet him - accompanied by an army of four hundred men.

Jacob’s response (vs 9 - 15) shows how much he has changed in the past twenty years. He doesn’t only send gifts ahead to Esau as a peace offering; he also cries out to God in prayer - speaking personally to Him this time, declaring God’s love and faithfulness, proclaiming His promises and asking for His help. Can it be true? On the eve of being reunited with his brother, is Jacob finally a transformed man?

Perhaps he still felt nervous in spite of his prayers; perhaps he was tossing and turning, unable to sleep as he thought about the next day and wondered how things would turn out; perhaps he was rehearsing what he would say to his brother... or simply continuing to lift the situation up to God in prayer. Finally, Jacob gets up in the middle of the night, and he is alone in the camp when something strange and incredible happens: a “man” comes and wrestles with Jacob for a long time. 

We only discover later that this “man” was some kind of representation of God’s divine presence.... but Jacob must have already sensed it as he wrestled there in the darkness of the night, because he said, “I won’t let you go until you bless me.” In response, the man gives Jacob a new name: he will no longer be called Jacob - which means the “deceiver.” Instead, he is to be called Israel - which means “he struggles with God” or “God wrestles.”

Jacob is awestruck: he realises once again that he has been in the presence of God, and has lived to tell the tale. And so, as he did after his first encounter, Jacob also gives that place a new name. He calls it Peniel, which means “face of God.” 

Two incredible encounters with God; both happened in times of great transition and uncertainty, but the names that Jacob gives to these two locations show that he has covered a lot of ground between the two incidents. In Genesis 28, he names the first place Bethel (house of God), saying, “Surely the Lord was in the place and I wasn’t even aware of it.” But now, in Genesis 32, he names the location Peniel (face of God) saying, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life has been spared.” What a difference! From barely knowing how to recognise God’s presence at Bethel, Jacob has matured into someone who is willing to wrestle with God in prayer at Peniel, someone who is not ready to give up on the blessing that God had promised him.

The situation with his brother is still uncertain and unresolved, but Jacob comes away from that encounter at Peniel with two things:

• he has received the blessing that he so much longed for
• but he will for evermore walk with a limp, a visible sign of his own vulnerability.

Such is the nature of personal encounters with God. They change us and they humble us. Our early encounters with God are evidence of His great mercy and grace towards us; He is tolerant of our brashness, our weakness, and even our uncertainty about whether whether it was really Him or not. Our God-encounters in later life are just as dependent on His grace, but they are often born also of our own awareness of weakness. Perhaps, like Jacob, we have fought with man and with God, and we have had humbling revelation of our own pride or selfishness or failings. Or perhaps we’re still full of self-decption about our own righteousness, and it’s that face to face encounter with God that humbles us and enables us to see ourselves as we really are.

From that point forward, we will “walk with a limp,” spiritually speaking. We’ll no longer be so prone to rely on our own strength; we’ll no longer be so convinced that we’re a “good person.” We’ll have grasped at last that God isn’t threatened by our questions and struggles, but at the same time we’ll have been humbled in His presence and made aware of our total dependence on Him: understanding for the first time, perhaps, that we are nothing without Him.

It took Jacob a long time; he was probably a man in his sixties by then. But it’s better to encounter God late in life, than to live our whole lives without ever learning to live them in God’s strength. When was your last life-changing encounter with God?

Foundation for flight

It's only been a few chapters, but there's a lot of water under the bridge since we saw Jacob fleeing from his angry brother and seeking refuge with his mother's relatives. Life has come full circle, and in Genesis 31 we find Jacob ready to flee again. Twenty years have gone by, Jacob now has two wives, eleven sons and a daughter, and he has become a wealthy man with large flocks of animals. It appears on the surface that Jacob’s reason for fleeing is because of the jealousy of his male cousins (who perceived him to be appropri-ating their family wealth and inheritance) and because of the increasingly negative and hostile attitude of his uncle, Laban.

The jealousy and hostility were only the trigger for the flight, though. We read twice in this chapter (vs 3 and 13) that God had spoken to Jacob, telling him to get ready to leave and return to the land of his birth. God can use our negative circumstances as a way of moving us out of one context and transferring us to another setting and season of fuller blessing in our life.

But that’s not always the way it works. Sometimes God will prompt us to stay in a difficult context despite the hardships... and that’s often when He wants to do a deeper work within our own character, or wants to use us to bring change in that negative situation. So it’s important that we never simply “run away,” but, before leaving that job or church or team, that we check in with God, “Do you want me to leave or do you want me to stay?”

Both require courage, and sometimes the one that God’s asking us to do is the way that requires the greater courage in that context. You need faith and courage to stay in a hard situation, and sometimes fleeing would be the cowardly choice. But there are other times when the decision to leave would actually be the right and most courageous one. That’s why we need to trust and obey the Holy Spirit’s prompting, always checking in with Him before making this sort of decision. For twenty years, Jacob had stayed in Paddan Aram, despite the many challenges and injustices. But now He has the word of the Lord that it’s time to make a major life change, uproot his kids and move on to a place of God’s greater purposes for his life and family. That’s a strong foundation for flight.

Payback time

Genesis chapter 29 finds Jacob the fugitive arriving at his eastern destination and starting to look for his relatives. After making a few initial enquiries, he finds his cousin Rachel, and we read the story of how he moves a heavy stone from the top of the well, so that she can give water to her flock of sheep and goats. Was this an admirable and chivalrous gesture on Jacob’s part, or was it evidence of cultural insensitivity - yet another example of Jacob’s bucking the system again, even though all the shepherds have told him that the local custom is to wait politely until all the flocks have arrived before uncovering the well.

Rachel takes Jacob home, where he is welcomed by his uncle Laban. When Laban hears Jacob’s story, he says, “You really are my own flesh and blood.” I can’t help wondering if this is just an innocent recognition that Jacob really is the nephew he’s never met, or is it a telling commentary on the stronghold of deception that was so characteristic of this family. (Like when we say that, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”)

It doesn’t take long for Jacob to fall in love with Rachel, and soon he’s making an agreement with Laban that he will work seven years in exchange for Rachel’s hand in marriage.

The seven years go by and finally the wedding day arrives. Generous uncle Laban throws a big celebration.... but then he shows his true colours and tricks Jacob by giving him Leah that night instead of Rachel. Like the script of a bad movie, Jacob wakes up the next morning and finds that the woman lying next to him in bed is not the woman that he thought he was marrying.

It’s horrifying, and yet there’s a certain poetic justice in it. With poor Leah as the victim (more about that in the post below) this is an ironic parody of how Jacob had tricked his own father. Just as he once pretended to be the other brother, Laban has now fooled him by pretending to give him the other sister!

Laban’s explanation for the trickery is that local custom doesn’t allow a younger daughter to be given in marriage before her older sister. Is Jacob reaping what he sowed when he flaunted local custom by uncovering the well? Is this why Laban chose deception rather than dialogue - because he didn’t expect  Jacob to show any sensitivity towards local cultural norms?

Jacob’s life illustrates the universal principle of sowing and reaping, and he finds himself in the unenviable postion of having to work another seven years in order to be married to the woman he loves. 

Not all “payback” happens quite so neatly, or so quickly, but the Bible does tell warn us, in Galatians 6: 7 - 10, that if we sow bad seed, we can expect somewhere along the line to reap bad fruit: “Don’t be misled; you cannot mock the justice of God. You will always harvest what you plant.”  This is not to say that it’s always God who instigates the payback; God is good and can never be the source of anything evil. But He has created a universe where sowing and reaping, both in the agricultural sense and the spiritual sense, are part of the natural order of things. A sobering thought when it comes to the smaller things in our lives, and not only the big things!

Love and motivation

Right in the middle of that story about Jacob working seven years (and ultimately fourteen years) for Laban is an interesting little verse that highlights for us the power of love, and the link that exists between love and motivation. Genesis 29: 20 says that Jacob served seven years to earn Rachel's hand in marriage, but he loved her so much that those seven years felt like just a few days. You'd expect the opposite, wouldn't you? You'd think that the time would drag by, seeming like an endless wait for the day when he could finally marry the woman he loved so much.

What Jacob illustrates for us here is that true love is an incredibly powerful motivator. He was able to see Rachel every day, and that gave him the strength and motivation to persevere through seven years of hard labour, knowing that one day they would finally be together. It wasn't a burden, so strong was the motivating power of his love.

We can see this same kind of dynamic at play in the workplace. If someone loves their job, they probably feel that the time flies by. If they hate their employment and see it only as a way of putting bread on the table, they will probably find that time drags by excruciatingly slowly and that they live their work lives with the "Thank God it's Friday" syndrome.

Exactly the same dynamic plays itself out in our relationship with God. If we truly love Him, we will look forward to spending time with Him, and won't see our prayer times or daily Bible reading as a religious "duty" to be fulfilled. Time in His presence will fly by, and leave us longing for more. We won't find ourselves dragging our heels and struggling to be obedient to something He's asked us to do because, as the apostle John wrote in the New Testament: "This is love for God: that we obey His instructions. And His commandments are not burdensome for us." (1 John 5: 3)

If you love someone, you long to please them and you'll do anything for them. No cost is too high to pay, no expression of affection is too much trouble for us. Even the "hard" things (like Jacob's fourteen years of hard work) will seem worth it, because we are motivated by love. And when it comes to God, we know that one day (both now and and in eternity) we will spend the rest of our lives together.

From Leah's pain to Leah's praise

Jacob may have got his just desserts (see today’s first post above), but let’s not overlook the fact that poor Leah was the victim in all this chicanery. Leah starts out as one of the tragic figures of the Bible narrative. The Hebrew word “rak” is unclear in Genesis 29 vs 17, with different Bible translations saying that she had weak eyes, delicate eyes, dull eyes or “eyes with no sparkle.” Did Leah have some kind of defect or infirmity, some kind of short sightedness like her uncle Isaac had later in life? Or is this simply a way of saying that she wasn’t as pretty as her sister? Was this perhaps a veiled culture, where a woman’s eyes were the first and almost only thing you saw of her?

In entering marriage, not only did Leah know that Jacob wanted her sister and not her, she probably deduced that her own father believed no one else would want her either. Why else would he resort to such trickery to see her married off? Leah must have felt completely unloved, and it probably only felt worse when, after just one week of marriage, she had to watch her own sister move into their home and become the much-loved wife in the household. Leah must have felt discarded, unvalued and completely helpless to do anything about her situation.

Perhaps God was the only One who really saw and understood Leah’s pain. He looked on her with compassion and He freed her from the curse of infertility that seemed to plague the women of that family. He made her able to have children - something that defined a woman’s worth and honour in that culture at the time.

Tha names that Leah gave to her first three sons (Reuben, Simeon, Levi) and the comments she makes when they are born, reveal her hope that her childbearing might be the thing that would help her secure the love and affection of her husband. But it didn’t, because this marriage had got off on the wrong foot from the start.

But it seems to me that some kind of inner change has happened in Leah’s life by the time her fourth son is born. It’s as if she has shifted her focus from Jacob, and his lack of appreciation for her, and is drawing close instead to God, the One who truly loves and values her. She names her fourth son Judah (which means Praise) and instead of making a commentary on what she doesn’t  have, this time she simply says, “Now I will praise the Lord.”

And then, it says in vs 35, she stopped having children. Was it simply that she wasn’t able to have any more? Or was it because she’d finally realised that she didn’t need to keep trying to prove anything or strive to earn love and acceptance any more?

What a profound difference it makes in our lives when we stop seeking the love and approval of others, and keep our eyes instead on the God who loves us unconditionally. We can relax and praise Him for His total acceptance of us.

Isaac's short sightedness

In Genesis chapter 27, we read the story of a man who thought he was dying. Isaac was more than a hundred years old at the time, so it’s not surprising that he thought his time on earth was drawing to a close. (Little did he know that he would actually live to be 180, as was a common occurence in those days.)

So Isaac made a plan to bless his oldest son, Esau. However, his eyesight was failing in his old age, and you probably know the story of how he was tricked into blessing the other son instead. The story is told in Genesis chapter 27, and you can also read about it in blog posts that came just before this one.

Isaac was tricked because he was short sighted - in a physical sense. But perhaps the greatest tragedy behind this story is that Isaac was also short sighted in a spiritual sense, and this may even have been a trigger that set this whole sorry story in motion.

Isaac certainly seems to understand the power of words: that a father’s blessing has an enormous impact on a child’s life, and that our words of blessing or cursing are not so easily revoked or shaken off in that child’s future. Many a person has struggled with poor self image throughout their life because a  parent constantly told them that, “You’ll always be a quitter; you’ll never amount to anything.” And many are those who have risen above incredible odds because their life was built on a foundation of affirming words: a parent or teacher who told them, “Never give up; you can achieve anything if you put your mind to it. I believe in you.” We would do well to remember, as Isaac, did, that our words of blessing carry incredible power.

Where Isaac’s spiritual short sightedness kicks in, is that he seems to have bought into the philosophy of “limited blessing.”  He acts as if there is only so much blessing to go round, and once it’s done, it’s done; once he has given his blessing to one son, there will be “nothing left” (vs 37) for the other.

Well, that might be true in terms of material possessions: the more kids you have, the less each one will receive as his share when you die. But surely blessing is like love: you can always find more to share out. Every parent knows that having a second or third child doesn’t mean that you love the first one any less.  It may have been partly cultural, but perhaps Isaac’s short sightedness is partly to blame for the rivalry that existed between the boys. (In  a later generation we see Jacob blessing all twelve of sons, even though he too had had his struggles with favouritism.) In God’s kingdom economy there is always more blessing to be given out.

But some Christians live their lives with that same kind of short sightedness; they haven’t  yet grasped the concept of “unlimited blessing.” They get jealous of a fellow Christian because God has blessed that person with financial provision or with wonderful answers to prayer. They feel competitive because the church down the road is growing faster than our church is. They compare themselves with someone who seems blessed with a particular spiritual gift of faith or teaching or wisdom or evangelism, and they think, “How come I don’t have that gift?” instead of focusing on developing the gifts that they do have.

In New Testament days, Paul wrote to the Ephesians that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing. He doesn’t reserve His blessings for only a select few believers, but wants to shower them on all of his children.

Sometimes we approach God as if he was Isaac - as if we have to earn his favour or compete for the blessings that He is giving out. But that philosopy is simply not true. God is a God of infinte resources, infinite blessing and infinite unconditional love. Let’s never fail to press in for all the blessings of the inheritance He has for us.

Rebekah's reflex and Rebekah's regret

It’s Genesis 25 verses 20 -26, and the camera zooms in on a pregnant lady. Rebekah was happy to be expecting, because she had been barren for twenty years and this pregnancy was an answer to her husband’s prayers. But she was also worried. Pregnant women often say that they can feel the baby kicking inside, but Rebekah was feeling a lot more than that, and she didn’t know what was going on. Perhaps she was anxious that she was going to lose the baby. There was no ultrasound in those days, so it wasn’t so easy to check that the baby was okay, and she had no way of knowing that she was actually expecting twins.

So, what was Rebekah’s reflex response in this situation of concern? She turned to the Lord and asked Him, “Why is this happening to me?” We can see that she does have a relationship with God, and expects that she will be able to hear His voice in response to her question and her worry. This was a great reflex on Rebekah’s part; it’s so easy for us to fret and worry about situations that confuse us, instead of having this reflex reaction of trusting God and asking for His input.

And so it came about that God, the divine obstetrician, told her she was expecting twins and explained to her what was going on. He also gave her some prophetic words about the two boys’ future. I often wonder if it was Jacob’s quieter stay-at-home nature that made him later become Rebekah’s favourite son, or did she have a particular soft spot for him because of the destiny God had spoken over his life?

Jump forward forty years, and we have a family situation of favouritism and sibling rivalry. Rebekah’s husband, Isaac, thinks that he is dying, and makes plans to bless his oldest son, Esau. Rebekah’s reflexes may have been good back at the time of her pregnancy, but she doesn’t handle the situation quite so well in these later years of her life. Was it simply favouritism and deception that made her instigate a complex charade that would allow the blessing to come to Jacob instead? Or was it some sort of misjudged step of faith, where she thought she had to intervene to prevent Isaac from pronouncing a blessing that she believed to be contrary to God’s stated purposes?

Like her parents-in-law before her (see post of 16th January), Rebekah tried to give God a helping hand, and make things turn out the way she believed they should. The sad saga is told in Genesis chapter 27 (see this post for more about that.) It’s never a good idea to use lies and deception to try to bring about God’s purposes, and the sorry scheme backfired on her. The result was that one twin was so furious, he began plotting to kill his brother, and by the end of chapter 27, Rebekah’s heart is filled with regret.

Rebekah sees that she has lost Esau - that her underhand actions have cost her her relationship with one of her sons. Favouritsm can do that within a family. And she quickly realises that there’s a danger of losing her other son too - if Esau finds a way to kill his twin. What regrets she must have felt as she made plans to send Jacob away for his own safety. “I’ll send for you when he calms down,” she said (somewhat naively!) “Why should I lose both of my sons in the same day?” (Genesis 27: 42 - 45)

In fact, she did lose both of her sons that day. Neither of them could have foreseen, as she said goodbye to Jacob, that he would be gone for more than twenty years, and that she would never see him again.

How tragic! A woman, who earlier in life has a healthy reflex of seeking God’s wisdom for her situation, finishes her life full of regrets because she has tricked her husband and lost both of her sons. It would have been so much wiser to let God be God, and trust that He is more than able to work out even the challenging situations for our good. Let’s live our lives with that reflex, and avoid having to live them with regret.

The problem of priorities: Esau's choice

In Genesis chapter 25 verses 27 - 34, we read of an interesting exchange between twin brothers. One wonders if Jacob and Esau were teenagers at the time this happened. Who else but a teenage boy would claim he was “dying of starvation,” just because he came home from a tiring day in the outdoors. It’s an illustration of how unbalanced a teenager’s priorities can be: they want things now and don’t want to wait for them. Delayed gratification is a vital life skill that parents need to help them learn at this age. They’d rather watch TV than do homework for an exam. They’d rather get that new bike now, than save up to buy it. And they see everything as more dramatic than it really is: is everyone really looking at that tiny pimple on their chin? Will they truly be a social outcast if they’re not wearing the latest designer label? Would Esau really have starved to death if he hadn’t got that lentil stew right there and then?

Learning to order priorities is part of growing up for pre-teens and teenagers. Tragically, some people never learn it, and they go on into adulthood without this important life skill. They get into credit card debt because they don’t want to wait for that new phone or car, or new clothes that they want.  They throw away their virginity because waiting for the right time and the right person requires too much self discipline. They give up their studies because they want to be out “having fun,” like all their friends are (or, at least, as they believe all their friends are doing.)

Most tragically of all, some - like Esau - throw away their birthright and never mature to be the person that they could have been. They squander their destiny because their lack of character causes them to settle for second best in life.

I guess this is why God, in the mystery of His omniscience, knew that the younger brother would be the one to inherit the birthright and blessing that were usually reserved for the firstborn.

But more about Jacob in a later post (see below.) What we read here about Esau is that he “despised” or “showed contempt” for his birthright. The Spanish word for despise is menospreciar - to consider something as being of lesser value. And in this Bible passage, the Hebrew verb bazah also means to undervalue or to see something as worthless. Esau simply didn’t care about what or who he could be in the future. All he cared about was getting what he wanted, and getting it right now.

So what about my life or yours? Where am I in danger of throwing away who I could be, because of settling for something lesser that I want out of life today?

It can happen with the big things in life, and it can happen in the smaller choices from day to day. Anyone who has ever been on a diet has experienced this temptation in a smaller way; many a dieter has traded their dream of a healthier body for the more immediate pleasure of a slice of delicious chocolate cake today. Sometimes we discover too late (as would happen with Esau) that today’s decisions shape tomorrow’s destiny, and having the wrong priorities today can lead to devastating consequences tomorrow.

Selfish ambition: Jacob's pitfall

I’m not sure what to make of the fact that Jacob appears to have been hassling with his twin brother right from birth. Some people seem to be born with the sort of “go for it” personality that makes them leaders and high achievers in the future. Sadly, unless their motivation and ambition is balanced by humility and godly character, these are often also the kind of people who end up destroying their own lives and leaving a trail of hurting people in their wake.

Interestingly, though, Jacob seems to be have been the quieter of the twins when the boys were growing up. He liked staying home and doing stuff around the house, while his brother Esau liked to be outdoors, doing things like hunting. And so it happened one day that Jacob was busy cooking a big pot of lentil stew, right at the moment when Esau arrived home exhausted from a day in the outdoors.

Now Esau had been the firstborn of the boys, so tradition dictated that he would inherit a double portion of the inheritance their father passed down to them. That’s what’s meant by the “birthright” of the firstborn son. I wonder if this seemed like an injustice to Jacob. After all, the “older twin” is a bit of a misnomer if you consider that twins are conceived and are growing in the womb at exactly the same time. I wonder if it seemed like a cruel quirk of fate that their position at the time of birth meant that Esau was born first and therefore technically the “older” of the two boys.

So when his hungry twin asks for a bowl of stew, Jacob grasps his opportunity and offers to give him the meal in exchange for his birthright. In his short sightedness, Esau swears an oath, giving Jacob the rights due to the firstborn.
There’s a difference between a birthright and a blessing. A birthright was an honour bestowed on the oldest son inn a family, and Esau carelessly gave his up in a moment of greed and impulsiveness. (Genesis 25: 34) A blessing could be given regardless of birthright, but a greater blessing was usually given to the son who had the birthright.

Jump forward two chapters, and a new drama is unfolding in the twins’ household. Their elderly father senses that his time on earth is drawing to an end, and begins making plans to bestow a blessing on his sons, beginning with Esau, the firstborn. If you’ve read Genesis chapter 27, you’ll know that Jacob and his mother mount an ambitious scheme to deceive Isaac and cheat Esau out of the blessing that would have been his.

Jacob may have got the blessing in that situation, but he paid a high price for it. He ended up so alienating his brother, that Esau wanted to kill him. Jacob had to flee from all that was familiar and precious to him: he was separated from his brother and his homeland for more than twenty years. He also discovered for himself the principle that what we sow, we reap, because he later found himself deceived and cheated multiple times by his uncle and father-in-law.

Ironically, it was never necessary for Jacob and Rebecca to engage in all that subterfuge. God had already given a prophetic word about great things in Jacob’s future. Was he aware of this, and made the mistake of trying to do God’s will in Jacob’s way? Or was he simply tripped up by his own selfish ambition - ambition that made him betray his own family and sent him on a 20 year detour before he could finally enter into his destiny?

It’s good to have godly ambition, but self-seeking ambition can be a trap for us. Let’s not take as long as Jacob did in learning to seek God’s will in God’’s way. He is more than able to lead us into all that He has purposed for our lives.

Secret grievances...

Deception damages trust and Abraham didn’t have a very good track record as far as Abimelech was concerned. Abraham had lied to Abimelech (Genesis 20) and this had caused some strain in their relationship. So it’s not surprising that, some time later, when the two men are seeking to patch things up and make a covenant together (Genesis chapter 21: 22 - 32) Abimlech says to Abraham, “Please promise me that you won’t deceive me again,” and Abraham swears that he won’t.

But there’s more to deception than the act of saying things are aren’t true. You can also deceive someone by not telling them things that are true. As the treaty process continues, Abraham happens to mention a grievance that is a potential threat to their covenant: one of his wells has been stolen by Ablimelech’s servants. 

Poor Abimelech is shocked. “This is the first I’ve heard about it, and I’ve no idea how it happened," he says. “Why didn’t you tell me about it before?” We can sense the pain in his heart when he discovers that Abraham has been nursing a grudge that Abimelech was completely unaware of. Perhaps he felt misjudged at the suggestion that he would knowingly allow anything to jeopardise their relationship and their treaty.

As we can see by Abimelech’s response to the news, and by what happened next, there was no reason at all for this situation to have been a problem that drove a wedge between them. It was only a threat to their relationship as long as it was kept silent and not spoken out. As soon as Abraham spoke directly to Abimelech, the potential threat no longer had any power to damage their treaty with one another.

It can be so easy for us to take offence at something another person has said or done, or something that they didn’t do or say. How tragic to guard that secret grievance in our hearts and allow it to affect our relationship, when the other person may be completely unaware of it, and not at all intending to let that thing come between us.

You might feel you have good reasons for your silence; you might be fearful of a confrontation and choose to “keep the peace” instead. Or you might be so convinced the other person was in the wrong, that you feel it’s up to them to approach you and apologise for what happened. 

It doesn’t matter what your reasons are; when you harbour a secret grievance and don’t take initiative to speak to the other person about what happened (or what you think happened), you are the one responsible for the break in your relationship. The other person might be as completely unaware of the issue as Abimelech was.... and just as eager to offer an explanation or to put things right. 

This is such a crucial issue that half a chapter of the New Testament (Matthew 18) is given to Jesus’ teaching about what to do in such situations. Don’t dabble in deception by allowing secret grievances to come between you and another person. And don’t assume that the person already knows what you’re feeling or thinking. It might be hard to do, but it’s always better to bring things truthfully into the open and work together to find a solution and reconciliation. 

It's not where you start that counts...

In a recent post (see 27th January) I reflected on Sarah’s laugh, the expression of her unbelief. In Hebrews 11: 11, a New Testament author, writing from the perspective of history, shows us the other side of the coin: Sarah’s faith.
Sarah is pretty unique in scripture; she’s the only woman in the Bible to have her name changed. That was usually reserved for the patriarchs and the apostles, men who played a significant role in the unfolding of the Bible’s story. And she’s also the only woman in the Bible whose age at the time of her death is mentioned; that too was usually reserved for kings and other firstborn males. So, what was the reason for Sarah’s being honoured in this way? It’s found in verse 11 of that well known chapter about people of faith: Sarah believed that God would keep His promise.

She may have started out by laughing. (So did Abraham.) She may have got weary of waiting, and messed things up with the Hagar fiasco. (Abraham did too.) But, somewhere along the line, Sarah moved from unbelief to unusual faith... and that is what she’s remembered for, and commended for, in this account. It’s not how you start out that counts, be it good or bad. It’s how you finish!

God didn’t define this couple’s story by any of their questioning or stumbling; He defined it by how they ended up, and by the faith that got them there. Starting out well and finishing in mediocrity is a tragedy. Starting out doubting and finishing by trusting is a triumph of faith. And it’s the same for us. God doesn’t focus on the times we failed or doubted; He’s looking to see whether we keep moving forward and whether we finish well in the end.

Citrus season...

If you live in a part of the world with citrus groves, you'll know that winter is the time of year when you're blessed with an abundant supply of vitamin C: all that freshly squeezed orange and grapefruit juice. Delicious!

My neighbour gave me some monster-sized lemons this week. Some were the sweet kind and some were the super-sour kind, so I decided to use the sour ones to make some lemon curd. Neither of my neighbours had heard of it, so I gave them a new taste experience today by serving up waffles with lemon curd when we were having our afternoon coffee. It got their seal of approval, and one of them confessed that she had never eaten a waffle before, either.

What is your God like?

There are many different ways of describing who God is. Lots of names and descriptions are found in the Bible; other descriptions have been spoken or penned by people throughout history who have experienced God's reality in their own life. I was struck this week by a description of God that was said by Abraham when he was a very old man.

In Genesis 24 verse 40, when speaking to a servant whom he was sending on a special mission, Abraham described God as the Lord in whose presence I have lived. This gives us an insight into who God is (personal, present, very close to us…) but it also gives us an insight into who Abraham is: someone who had chosen, despite all his mistakes and weaknesses, to live his life in God's presence. There were many other people on earth in Abraham's day, but not all would have described God in the same way… because not all had made a personal choice to live in God's presence. It was this choice of Abraham's that caused people to describe him as a friend of God. (James 2: 23)

I remember, during the years that I lived in Glasgow and Paisley, that a King's Kids leader I worked with used to make this statement to the teenagers: You can be as close to God as you want to be. Whether or not you live your life in God's presence, as Abraham did, doesn't depend on God, because He's already made the decision to draw very close to you. Now it depends on your, and my, response: will we make the choice to live our lives every day in His presence?