We are reading through the whole Bible! It's one chapter a day, and today is Genesis 35. Jump in and join us! Every week, I"m blogging about something from the past week's reading. I am not a Bible scholar, but I"m just sharing my impressions and things that I have heard over the years that might relate to it. Please feel free to email or leave a comment on what speaks to your heart! I hope that you find yourself falling in love with God's Word.
We really got into Jacob's story this past week. He was quite the schemer in his younger years, wasn't he? We also learned that Esau means "hairy." :-) Esau was so hairy, in fact, that when Jacob pretended to be him (You know, when he stole Esau's blessing? Right after he traded Esau some stew for his birthright?) he had to cover his arms with goatskins so that Isaac (who was nearly blind at the time) would think smooth-skinned Jacob was his firstborn.
Also, Jacob was so in love with Leah that he worked for her father for YEARS for the honor of having her as his wife. I can barely get my hubby to pick up his socks for me, lol.
I"d like to focus on a passage from Genesis 28 today, and focus on something that a pastor named Jeff Pruitt shared in a sermon. In this passage, Jacob is on the run from Esau, who he feared would kill him. He has come to this place called Luz, which was not a very desirable area to be. I believe that today we might refer to it as a dump. It was certainly not anywhere that one would want to linger.
10 Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Haran. 11 When he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. 12 He had a dream in which he saw a stairway [d] resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. 13 There above it [e] stood the LORD, and he said: "I am the LORD, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying. 14 Your descendants will be like the dust of the earth, and you will spread out to the west and to the east, to the north and to the south. All peoples on earth will be blessed through you and your offspring. 15 I am with you and will watch over you wherever you go, and I will bring you back to this land. I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
16 When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, "Surely the LORD is in this place, and I was not aware of it." 17 He was afraid and said, "How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven."
What Pastor Jeff said is that our situation might not be so different from Jacob's. We are in a desolate place, and we are depressed or angry or grieving...we are in our Luz. But God is right there with us, working on our behalf and promising us a beautiful future, even if we can't see it. God sees it--He knows the end from the beginning. That's another cool way that Scripture works, because we read about how promises were made and fulfilled all those years later. If we see God being faithful there, we can trust Him to be faithful to us.
I also love how Jacob (whose name means "heel," btw) is another deeply flawed individual who was used by God to bring forth a great nation. I think there is a tendency to look at people that we hear about in the Bible as being perfect (none were, with the exception of Christ), or having superhero powers, etc., but when you really get to know their stories you realize they were just like you and me. And you see, too, that God spoke to Jacob when he was still a mess!
"Surely the Lord is in this place!"
Isn't that wonderful?
"I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you."
Isn't that comforting?
This reminds me of the song "Before The Morning" by Josh Wilson. He talks about how life is not a snapshot, and that someday we'll see the bigger picture. We might see it on this earth, or we might see it in Heaven, but we will see it.
Would you dare to believe, that even now in your Luz, God is with you? And that there is great joy in store for you?
