plans

It’s hard to see God working when we’re in the middle of our own problems. If we don’t intentionally watch, it’s easy to miss.

I thought that this morning reading about the time Israel’s family ran out of food, for the second time, and needed to go back to Egypt to get more. Their brother Joseph (although they didn’t know it was him) had said they couldn’t come back without their youngest brother, Benjamin.

Israel dug in his heels, because Benjamin was the last remaining son (or so he thought) of his beloved Rachel. But the brothers were adamant; they would not go to Egypt without Benjamin. There was no point.

Then I read this, in Genesis 43:6 6: “Israel asked, ‘Why did you bring this trouble on me by telling the man you had another brother?’”

That simple statement, one sentence, stopped me. For one thing, it seemed so quintessentially Jacob: “You should have lied! You could have deceived that ruler and avoided all this!” But it also seemed so human. Who of us, faced with a reality we don’t want to accept, hasn’t said some “if only” statement similar to this?

But we know the whole story. We know that Israel still has two sons of Rachel, not one; we know that he’s about to be reunited with the long-lost Joseph. And so, with that wonderful ending in sight, I find myself shaking my head at Israel’s peevishness. God is about to bless him, and he’s resisting the blessing!

But I’m sure I’ve done the same thing – in fact, I know I have. I can think of times when I have. So in the end, it reminds me of my own inability to fully get with God’s program.

The truth is this: often I’m so sure I know the best thing, and I’m so focused on my own desires, that I can’t see God working. In fact, I can resist God, because he isn’t doing what I’m trying to do and I think that what he’s doing isn’t helpful. But in the end, I see the blessing God was trying to give me all along.

So, much as I can dislike Israel, today I identify with him. I feel empathy, because when I read his words I hear my own voice. Thank God that he doesn’t leave me to my own plans!

changed

One of the things that always impressed me about Daniel was his fearlessness in doing what was right no matter what the threat. This morning I was impressed in the same way with Joseph. I was reading a story I’ve read many times before, about Pharaoh having bad dreams and Joseph’s former jail-mates finally remembering him.

Genesis 41:14-16 “So Pharaoh sent for Joseph, and he was quickly brought from the dungeon. When he had shaved and changed his clothes, he came before Pharaoh.

Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said of you that when you hear a dream you can interpret it.’

‘I cannot do it,’ Joseph replied to Pharaoh, but God will give Pharaoh the answer he desires.’

I wonder if Joseph was tempted, even for a second, to say, “Sure, tell me about your dream.” After all, the only reason he got out of that hole and got a bath and some clean clothes was because Pharaoh thought Joseph could do something for him. It doesn’t seem prudent at that point to say, in essence, “Well, no, I can’t. You don’t need me, you need God.”

Joseph gave the glory to God for what he’d already done (interpret the dreams of the two servants) and expressed confidence in what what God would continue to do. It seems to me an amazing expression of faith for a man who had spent a long time in jail. Prison obviously didn’t make Joseph bitter. And, of course, his faith turned out to be well-placed.

I would love to have so much confidence in the Lord, and so little need for a reputation of my own, that I could think more often like Joseph. I struggle with both those things. I want people to give me credit for my work; I want the accolades that I feel I earn. And I often wonder if God will come through on something that’s important to me. What if this is one of those times I’ll be called to suffer?

To be able to say, “I’m not that good, but God is. All I can do is pray. But I’ll do that!” To be able to say, “Without Jesus I’m no different than you are, but let me tell you about him!” I wish I was there. Joseph seems to me to have gone way past just putting himself aside; it seems that he never even thinks about himself at all. 

That’s different than the boy Joseph who boasted about his dreams. God used slavery and prison to change that boy into the man Joseph who gives God all the glory. I trust that God isn’t finished changing me.

no worries

It struck me this morning what a great blessing Joseph was to people who weren’t followers of Jehovah. Eventually, of course, Joseph would save untold numbers of Egyptians from starvation, but look at his first couple of years in Egypt, related in Genesis 39.

“From the time he put him in charge of his household and of all that he owned, the Lord blessed the household of the Egyptian because of Joseph. The blessing of the Lord was on everything Potiphar had, both in the house and in the field. 6 So Potiphar left everything he had in Joseph's care; with Joseph in charge, he did not concern himself with anything except the food he ate.” (Verses 5-6)

That passage describes Joseph’s life with the man who bought him from the Ishmaelite slave traders. Despite the way he prospered with Joseph, Potiphar ended up sending him to prison. There, the same thing happened.

“So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there. 23 The warden paid no attention to anything under Joseph's care, because the Lord was with Joseph and gave him success in whatever he did.” (Verses 22-23).

I want to be a Christian like that. I want to walk so close to God, and to be so close to the heart of his work here on earth, that God’s care-taking of me overflows into blessings on any unbeliever fortunate to be nearby. 

Can you imagine a better witness? What if my boss’s life got easier and better because I faithfully followed Jesus? What if the company was more profitable and the employees safe and healthier and more financially stable? What if in the process of living every day for God, he blesses my work not so that I benefit, but so those around me are blessed?

It seems not only like a good witness, but also like the best possible way to serve God and other people. I get it that God doesn’t work with and through everyone like he did through Joseph. I also think that I should work for God as though I might be someone that he could.

unloved

This morning, I read one of the saddest things so far this year, and it was part of my devotions. Genesis 37:3-4 reads, “Now Israel loved Joseph more than any of his other sons, because he had been born to him in his old age; and he made an ornate robe for him. When his brothers saw that their father loved him more than any of them, they hated him and could not speak a kind word to him.”

This passage makes me feel bad for Joseph, because I can’t imagine what it was like to be loved by Dad but hated by the rest of the family. But, honestly, I feel worse for the brothers. To know that your own father considered you second or third or even twelfth best – that’s the kind of thing that permanently scars people. I know several grown men who are still trying to win the approval of their fathers. No wonder Israel’s sons did such destructive things!

I’m reminded of how important it is for parents to make their children feel loved. There are a lot of important things moms and dads do – teach life skills, coach good citizenship, model a strong faith – but make them feel completely loved may the be most important. If love isn’t found at home, where will kids find it? And where will they find the self-confidence not to try to buy love with favors?

It makes me grateful that God is a better father than that. God’s love is perfect and complete and never-ending, and sufficient for any bad thing I confront. God’s love is even enough to overcome the sub-standard loving that many kids get at home. 

At the end of my rumination, I just want to love all the kids, and do what I can to protect them from that feeling we all get once in a while that no one loves us. I wish I could make sure that no child would ever feel worth less than their peers.

But I need to remember that, even though  Israel’s imperfect love would lead to abusive behavior, plots of murder, and the human trafficking of Joseph, God would work good from it, in one of the most epic stories in the whole Bible. This sad story will take a lot of tragic twists and turns, but it has one the best happy endings ever.

Because the bottom lines, that’s one of God’s main things – happy endings for anyone who puts his or her faith in Jesus. God’s love does that, not mine or any human being’s.

covenant

Genesis 35:9-13 “After Jacob returned from Paddan Aram, God appeared to him again and blessed him. God said to him,’Your name is Jacob, but you will no longer be called Jacob; your name will be Israel.’ So he named him Israel.

And God said to him, ‘I am God Almighty; be fruitful and increase in number. A nation and a community of nations will come from you, and kings will be among your descendants. The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give to you, and I will give this land to your descendants after you.’ Then God went up from him at the place where he had talked with him.”

The covenant continues. Jacob, now Israel, is the second generation after Abraham, and God confirms in this passage the same promises he made originally to Abraham. I find that hugely reassuring.

The covenant rests entirely on the all-powerful and unchanging character of God. That’s why he alone passed between the halves of animal carcasses when the covenant was made.

Flawed as they were, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were God’s people, chosen for his purposes. But as with me, God’s work never depended on them. Instead, God gave them the enormous blessing of including them in his work. As God changes the world, he also transforms those of us he invites to work with him.

Success is guaranteed – it’s God’s plan. If I go along, my transformation is guaranteed too. Nothing depends on me. What a blessing!

bad behavior

Sometimes when I read the Bible it seems rich with meaning for my life. Other times, less so. This morning was one of those other times. 

In Genesis 33 and 34 I continued on with the story of Jacob, considered one of the patriarchs of God’s people. Jacob is probably my least favorite patriarch, and these two chapters are an example of why. First, he meets brother Esau, lies to him about getting together later, and then runs away.

That worked out poorly – a young man of the town where Jacob settles molests his daughter. Two sons commit pre-meditated mass murder. And Jacob responds this way, in Genesis 34:30: “Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, ‘You have brought trouble on me by making me obnoxious to the Canaanites and Perizzites, the people living in this land. We are few in number, and if they join forces against me and attack me, I and my household will be destroyed.’”

That’s what I always think about Jacob – he’s obnoxious. His lying, manipulative approach to relationships constantly gets him in trouble. It’s no wonder his sons are hot-headed and vengeful. Where in scripture is the example of their father dealing honestly and forthrightly with people?

It’s hard for me to pull out the word for my own life here, other than the obvious one that when you behave like Jacob does your life probably isn’t going to be easy.

But then, often my life hasn’t been easy because I lied to someone or tried to manipulate a relationship. Am I judging Jacob but excusing myself for the same behavior? That’s a thing that behavioral scientists call the Fundamental Attribution Error, this idea that my bad behaviors are forced on me by circumstances but other people do the same bad things because they’re bad. 

Jacob’s entire story is one of grace by God for a person who didn’t earn any of it. God didn’t give Jacob an easy life, but he walked with Jacob through every step of it. And he worked out his plan and kept his promise to make Jacob’s sons into a great nation. 

I find that immensely comforting. I can mess up as badly as Jacob and his sons – and I do – but that doesn’t mean God will leave me. Christ’s blood is sufficient, and God’s love never ends.

providence

Jacob got a lot of things from God that it doesn’t seem he deserved. 

Jacob, known as the deceiver, managed to mess up most of his key relationships. He broke the trust of his father by pretending to be the eldest son in order to get the blessing. He tricked his brother out of both that blessing and his birthright. He neglected his first wife and didn't exert a lot of leadership in bringing harmony into his home. 

This morning, I read in Genesis 31 and 32 of his flight from his uncle/father-in-law Laban, and his concerned preparation for an encounter with his estranged brother. These passages as much as any others portray the stressful life Jacob led because of his deceitful, manipulative habits. 

In spite of that, God watched over Jacob. Look at verses 4-7 of chapter 31, part of the account of Jacob’s plot to sneak away from Laban:: “So Jacob sent word to Rachel and Leah to come out to the fields where his flocks were. He said to them, ‘I see that your father’s attitude toward me is not what it was before, but the God of my father has been with me. You know that I’ve worked for your father with all my strength, yet your father has cheated me by changing my wages ten times. However, God has not allowed him to harm me.’”

No prize himself, Laban did his best to cheat Jacob, but God wouldn’t let him. God ensured that Jacob had great wealth as he headed back to Canaan. I wonder why? It doesn’t seem like Jacob deserved it. Jacob wasn’t changed by God’s goodness: soon he would deceive and flee from Esau, and later in life, Jacob would create a deep split between his sons by his continued favoritism toward Rachel. 

Here’s the conclusion I come to: God’s providence is an act of grace, rooted completely in his great love and completely separate from any worth I might have. Good thing, too, or I might not experience much of it.

An additional thought: though a great blessing to me, God’s providence may be given first and foremost for his purposes. Jacob was a key link in God’s plan to save his people. Is it possible that he blessed Jacob primarily for Joseph’s sake? Or for some other purpose we can’t discern from scripture?

I find myself idly interested in these questions but mostly just comfortable in my confidence that God’s good wisdom will result in good things for his people. That reassurance itself is a great grace.

loved

There are some real-world outcomes to the fact that God is love. Sometimes I forget that this is God’s primary attribute. As I remember God as provider and God as judge, I sometimes forget that he is the thing that defines what love is and shows it to the world. 

This morning,I read this, from Genesis 29:31-30: “When the Lord saw that Leah was not loved, he enabled her to conceive, but Rachel remained childless. Leah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Reuben, for she said, ‘It is because the Lord has seen my misery. Surely my husband will love me now.’

She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘Because the Lord heard that I am not loved, he gave me this one too.’ So she named him Simeon.

Again she conceived, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘Now at last my husband will become attached to me, because I have borne him three sons.’ So he was named Levi.

She conceived again, and when she gave birth to a son she said, ‘This time I will praise the Lord.’ So she named him Judah. Then she stopped having children.

When Rachel saw that she was not bearing Jacob any children, she became jealous of her sister. So she said to Jacob, ‘Give me children, or I’ll die!’

Jacob became angry with her and said, ‘Am I in the place of God, who has kept you from having children?’”

I feel sorry for Leah – it wasn’t her fault she wasn’t as pretty as Rachel. It wasn’t her fault her dad pawned her off onto her husband, in a sneaky, underhanded way that started her marriage off on a really bad footing. Imagine what it must have felt like after only two weeks of marriage for your husband to bring the woman he really loves into your tent!

God saw, and God cared, because God is love and love is what he wants for his children. God did the thing only God can do: he sent children to Leah and with-held them from Rachel. Ironically, Rachel takes it out on Jacob. Rachel demands from Jacob what only God can give; Leah begs from Jacob what God expects everyone to give.

In the end, Leah sees the great blessing in being loved by God even though she isn’t by her husband. It reminds me that while human love is fickle, God’s love is constant. 

patches

Genesis 28:6-9 “Now Esau learned that Isaac had blessed Jacob and had sent him to Paddan Aram to take a wife from there, and that when he blessed him he commanded him, ‘Do not marry a Canaanite woman,’ and that Jacob had obeyed his father and mother and had gone to Paddan Aram. Esau then realized how displeasing the Canaanite women were to his father Isaac; so he went to Ishmael and married Mahalath, the sister of Nebaioth and daughter of Ishmael son of Abraham, in addition to the wives he already had.”

This little vignette, tucked in the middle of the story of Jacob in Genesis 27 and 28, seems to me to capture a poignant reality of my faith life, and I suspect the faith walks of many others.

Esau, in the middle of living his own life, being himself, doing what feels good, making himself happy, YOLO-ing – choose your catch phrase – realizes that his choice of women has offended his dad. Dad controls the estate, so this might be a problem to Esau’s pursuit of self-fulfillment. But Esau has an answer: in addition to his Canaanite wives, he adds another with, hopefully, a better pedigree.

[Sidebar: isn’t it interesting that Jacob turns to that competing clan of Abraham’s offspring, the Ishmaelites, for a better class of wife?]

I immediately see myself in Esau. How often hasn’t that been my answer to some compromise I’ve made with worldly values? While I was in the Guard, I always worked the Sunday of drill weekend but made sure I attended chapel services as well. At times when I’ve separated myself from communal worship for whatever reason, I’ve tried to make it up with prayer or Bible reading. I’m sure there are many other examples of my inclination to put patches on the tears and stains of my disobedience.

Here’s my problem: I so quickly excuse the sins I commit by pointing to the good that I try to do. I’m good at devotions, and reflecting  and writing about what I read in scripture. That doesn’t excuse my badness, but it’s easy for me to think it might.

Esau thought one acceptable wife would compensate for the more numerous unacceptable ones. Is that how I view my behaviors? Do I really believe God will forgive my daily pettiness and mean-spiritedness and snark and fits of anger and self-centeredness because I blog my devotional thoughts and preach every third Sunday?

I don’t think that’s what I believe, but this morning Esau makes me wonder. That’s the great thing about scripture: if you think about what you read, it’s like looking in a mirror.

better man

Here’s one of the things that I struggle to understand: Why are non-Christians sometimes better people than Christians?

I’m pondering that question this morning because I read, in Genesis 26, about Isaac repeating the same mistake his dad made twice before: he lied and presented his wife as his sister. In all three cases these two Godly men were moved by personal fear (read, “lack of trust”) to put their wives in a position where they might have to fight for their honor.

But when Isaac did this while staying with the Philistines, their king, Abimelek, found him out. And then we read this, in verses 9 and 10: 

“So Abimelek summoned Isaac and said, ‘She is really your wife! Why did you say, “She is my sister”?’

Isaac answered him, ‘Because I thought I might lose my life on account of her.’

Then Abimelek said, ‘What is this you have done to us? One of the men might well have slept with your wife, and you would have brought guilt upon us.’”

I guess my current experience with non-believers predisposes me to think that they’re less sexually moral that God’s people, but Abimelek knows and all his people know you don’t sleep with another man’s wife. Abimelek is rightfully angry that Isaac was tempting his men to sin. 

But Abimelek will turn out to be a pretty good friend and neighbor for Isaac, showing that not only does he value marriage, but he knows how to forgive. In this story, Abimelek is the better man.

When I consider my own behavior, it gets easier to understand, and harder to condemn Isaac. I easily excuse things I do that anger me when others do them. I am just as likely to take matters into my own hands as I am to wait patiently for God. And I can sometimes decide that what I’m facing is an earthly matter that God won’t be interested in fixing for me. Any or all of these things can put in me in positions where I behave badly, even compared to people who don’t call themselves Christian.

When I consider who is the better person, and what makes them so, I have to remember that Jesus is the standard and none of us will come close to living up to it. The comparisons are not only unhelpful, they’re invalid because I’m comparing two sinners. My mistake is in thinking only of the other guy as a failure.

Instead of trying to the better man, instead of comparing, I’m going to try find ways to partner. What can we learn from each other? How can we help each other? Maybe if I work with others to make this world closer to what Jesus wants, I can become less judgmental and they can see something attractive in a Jesus-follower. 

make sure

I wonder if dying took more faith for Abraham than living?

I read about Abraham’s death this morning, in Genesis 24, and what made me wonder is verses 6 and 7, which are part of a passage telling how Abraham instructed his servant to go back to Terran and find a wife for Isaac.

“’Make sure that you do not take my son back there,’ Abraham said. ‘The Lord, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, “To your offspring I will give this land”—he will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there.’”

As I read this, I thought first that Abraham was worried that if Isaac went home, he’d never come back. God’s promise wouldn’t be fulfilled.

But then I realized that God’s promises are always fulfilled, and Abraham would know this. In that light, Abraham’s wish to keep Isaac in Canaan seemed like an expression of faith, that everything God said would be true. Abraham was so confident that he knew Isaac’s place of blessing would be in this promised new life.

Either way, Abraham was considering a promise from God that he would never see fulfilled. No matter how he looked at it, he needed faith to let go and let God do what he said he would. Abraham left his hope for a future in God’s hands just a surely as he left hope for a bride for Isaac in his servant’s hands.

It’s another example of simple but complete faith. I see it so often in scripture, and so seldom in my own life. My faith is complicated. My faith often requires my help. My faith can be full of “what ifs” and “yeah, buts.” 

Today Abraham reminds me simply to trust. Don’t overthink anything that God has said he would do. I hope I can do that, at least some of the time. I think life would be easier.

God himself

Sometimes being an English major makes me seem weird to the rest of the world – OK, there are probably other reasons as well. But I love words, and how words get put together in sentences, and all the ways that words have concrete meanings but when you string them together they can imply meanings as well.

This morning, I had one of those moments, reading the account of the testing of Abraham in Genesis 22. In verses 6-8 it says this: “Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, ‘Father?’

‘Yes, my son?’ Abraham replied.

‘The fire and wood are here,’ Isaac said, ‘but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?’

Abraham answered, ‘God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.’ And the two of them went on together.”

There’s a question and an answer here that is very familiar, because I’ve been hearing this story since I was a boy. “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” “God himself will provide.” But this morning, as I read, this is what I saw: “Where is the lamb for the burnt offering?” “God himself.”

Now, I’m sure in the original Hebrew those sentences had a different construction, but in English this shouted to me of Jesus. God himself will be our sacrificial lamb!

Abraham, whose heart must have been breaking, and Isaac, innocent of what was going on, seem to me to represent our walk through life. Sometimes we know good and well that there is evil around us and evil within us, and we face it with grim determination. Sometimes, though, we think things are great, we’re on a fun outing with Dad, unaware that life is about to take an abrupt 90-degree turn. 

In any circumstance, though, our great good news, our only hope, is the same thing. God himself was our lamb for the offering. That’s the only way evil loses. 

God did provide a ram for Abraham, and he provided a Lamb for the world. There is no reason or sense in despair for me, no matter what I face.

God's business

Nothing good happens when people try to control or manipulate things that are God’s business. I think that often as I read scripture, and I thought it again reading Genesis 19 and 20.

Chapter 20 clearly establishes God’s authority over the womb. That chapter tells of the time Abraham fooled Abimelek into thinking Sarah was his sister, not his wife. God acted to fix the mess Abraham got himself and Sarah into, and at the end we read this, in verses 17-18: 17-18:

 “Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelek, his wife and his female slaves so they could have children again, for the Lord had kept all the women in Abimelek’s household from conceiving because of Abraham’s wife Sarah.”

The point  is impossible to miss: God decides when a new life starts. He decided when Abraham and Sarah would have their own baby, and he decided when the women in Abimelek’s family wouldn’t have theirs. 

Abram and Sarai tried to control their own situation by using Hagar as a surrogate. The result was Ishmael, who would father a people, the Ishmaelites, who would be enemies of Israel.

In Genesis 19, there’s another story of two young women who needed to fix their own problem of childlessness: they got Dad drunk and snuck into his bed. Here’s the end of the story, in verses 36-38: “So both of Lot’s daughters became pregnant by their father. The older daughter had a son, and she named him Moab; he is the father of the Moabites of today. The younger daughter also had a son, and she named him Ben-Ammi; he is the father of the Ammonites of today.”

Here's where I always remind myself: keep those three nations, the Ishmaelites, the Moabites, and the Ammonites, in your memory. I know I’ll see them again as thorns in the sides of God’s people, especially in Judges. 

Nothing good happens when people try to control or manipulate things that are God’s business. I need to remember that, because I get impatient waiting for God. I relate to Abraham and Sarai when they feel like they have to do it themselves. I not only want to control the timing, I have my preferred outcomes. It takes a lot of trust to wait on the Lord.

But trust comes from being trustworthy, and God has been completely trustworthy. He has never failed me once. There isn’t a more sure thing than trusting in him.

your great love

This morning, I read first, in Genesis 17 and 18, the story of God’s visit to Abram, in which he changed Abram’s name to Abraham, Sarai’s name to Sarah, and promised them a son of their own. God also tells Abraham of his plans to destroy Sodom, and Abraham pleads for that city.

Then, following our church's Bible reading plan, I read Psalm 5. In the context of Abraham’s lack of an heir and God’s righteous response to the wickedness of Sodom, I was struck by verses 3-7, which say this:

“In the morning, Lord, you hear my voice;

in the morning I lay my requests before you

and wait expectantly.

For you are not a God who is pleased with wickedness;

with you, evil people are not welcome.

The arrogant cannot stand

in your presence.

You hate all who do wrong;

you destroy those who tell lies.

The bloodthirsty and deceitful

you, Lord, detest.

But I, by your great love,

can come into your house;

in reverence I bow down

toward your holy temple.”

These verses are uncompromising in their description of God’s abhorrence of evil, which connects in obvious ways to Sodom. But verse 3 could almost be words from Abraham, laying before God his desire for a son, and pleading with God for the city where his nephew lives. It’s one of those interesting juxtapositions that I would never have seen without this particular reading assignment.

Verse 7 is especially striking, because I identify that not just with God’s intimate visit to Abraham, but also with myself. That verse feels exactly like my relationship with God. What an amazing thing that I am invited to approach God when I’m barely less wicked than those he wants to destroy! All by his great love.

Of course, that’s the part of this passage that points me back to Jesus. God’s wrath should fall like fire on my head, just as it did in Sodom. But instead God loves me and cherishes me as a son. How can that be? Only because of the blood of Jesus.

I’ve said it so often here, but it needs to be said again: Hallelujah! What a Savior!

seen

There are a lot of names for God, especially in the Old Testament, but I read a new one this morning. The context is this: Hagar, a pawn in Abram and Sarai’s human plan to bring him an heir, has run away from camp because of Sarai’s abuse. As she rests by a spring, pregnant and no doubt tired and dispirited, feeling like there is no place she belongs, an angel  comes to her. Go back, the angle says. God has a plan for your son.

And then this, in Genesis 16:13: “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me.’” 

The God who Sees Me. What an awesome name! What a wonderful thing, to think that God is looking, he has his eye on me. He sees me!

I think of all the times in our lives when we can feel unseen. At a high school dance, when your crush seems oblivious. In college, when you wonder if your profs even care. At home, when your spouse seems to value the services you provide much more than who you are and what you long for. At work, where it seems like you’re just another piece of equipment.

Everyone else might be rushing past me, too intent on their own lives to notice that I’m sad, or happy, or frustrated. But God sees me. God knows everything I feel. God notices every circumstance of my life. God understands how it all makes me feel – he not only made this world as is everywhere in it, he took a human body and llived here for more than thirty years.

This morning it seems to me that there aren’t many things more comforting than this idea that God is watching. And I long to be able to say, as Hagar said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” That intimate, direct, unarguable communication right from God that he has a plan, that he is watching over me – it seems such a sweet, sweet blessing.

I can have that, but it’s unlikely to come as overtly as it did for Hagar. However, I can talk to God whenever I want, and Jesus sits at his right hand to as assurance that I will be heard. God reveals himself not just in scripture, but in his daily providence and grace. 

So both of us are seen. God sees me, and if I look, he’ll be there. God grant me the strength to look past all the distractions and to see him at work. 

choice

Dawn had a great way of ensuring that our two kids shared fairly: if ever there was something that had to be divided, one split it up and the other got to choose his or her half first. That was a technique meant to guard against our human tendency to take advantage of each other, and to seek the best for ourselves.

God doesn't make it that easy – he lets me choose what I want, and then live with the consequences. In Genesis 13 is the story of what took place when Abram's and Lot's herds got too big to graze together, and the two had to go their separate ways. Abram told his nephew to pick his territory first, and we read of Lot's choice in verses 10-13.

"Lot looked around and saw that the whole plain of the Jordan toward Zoar was well watered, like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt. (This was before the Lord destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.) So Lot chose for himself the whole plain of the Jordan and set out toward the east. The two men parted company: Abram lived in the land of Canaan, while Lot lived among the cities of the plain and pitched his tents near Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked and were sinning greatly against the Lord."

Lot did exactly what we all do – he took the best for himself. But he made that judgment the way I usually do, by measuring in worldly terms. The best dessert is the biggest one, the best car is the most luxurious, the best office is the corner one with lots of windows. 

Lot was unconcerned by the presence of wicked men in his territory. He could only see the richness of the land, and the easy life ahead of him. Of course, that life involved being captured by raiding kings, as we read in Chapter 14. And later, after a complete compromise of his own values, Lot would lose everything as Sodom was destroyed.

It's a reminder to me that choice is a potentially dangerous thing. My choices can reinforce my values or compromise them. My choices can move me toward or away from my Christian friends. My choices can make me more or less healthy. My choices will form my habits, which will eventually dictate most of my life. 

As I make choices, what am I looking at? Do I only see the things that will make life easy? Do I only see the things that the world values? Or do I see clearly the goals of my own sanctification, and the opportunities to fulfill my calling as part of Jesus' restoring force in this world?

These are important questions, because when I look back too often I have chose like Lot. And too often the outcomes have made obedience harder. I still look at choice like a child, zeroing in on instant gratification with the biggest or the most. 

It will take discipline to change a lifetime of practice, but there's an easy first step: prayer. Maybe I need to pray through more of my choices instead of thinking I know best. It's worth a try.

go

Genesis 12:1-3 The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.

I will make you into a great nation,

and I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

and you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

and whoever curses you I will curse;

and all peoples on earth

will be blessed through you.”

This is an interesting moment in the story of God’s people, because it seems to me to be a transition from a kind of aimlessness to a sense of purpose. Abram represents the 10th generation since the ark came to rest after the flood, a long span of history summarized in a few verses of genealogy. Whatever may have happened during those years, the only event in all that time that is mentioned in scripture is the scrambling of languages at the Tower of Babel.

Now God speaks to the son of a wandering patriarch, Terah, who had stopped with his clan midway on a trip from Chaldea to Canaan years before. He has a simple command: “Go.” Abram doesn’t know exactly where, or why, or what he will do. He’s only told that if he obeys, his ancestors will become a great nation.

That was enough for Abram, and the seeds of the covenant were sown. One day soon would come that vision of God passing between the butchered animals, taking responsibility for both sides of the covenant with Abraham and his people. And on another day centuries later, Jesus would redeem me and make me part of the covenant. This episode in today’s reading initiates the restored relationship that I and my family have with God.

I wonder if I could have gone in faith like Abram did. Probably – I believe God doesn’t call people like he did Abram without equipping them to follow. I don’t know of anyone who resisted God’s call to a specific mission like this. So far, I haven’t had a call like that, but Abram is still a great hero of faith, a model of obedience that I need to be reminded of.

My road of obedience looks a lot different, but I can still only walk it in God’s strength. My prayer today is to see what God would have me do, and then to find the will to do it.

never again

"Never again" are very human words, maybe associated with a New Year's resolution or said in regret and pain after a bad decision. I remember those words from a badly hung-over college classmate, for example. Usually when people say that, the words express an intent but not reality, because we seem to have little ability to stay away from bad behavior. 

When God says things, those, it's not that way. When Noah and his family finally got off the boat, we read these words (Genesis 8:20-22): "Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and, taking some of all the clean animals and clean birds, he sacrificed burnt offerings on it. The Lord smelled the pleasing aroma and said in his heart: 'Never again will I curse the ground because of humans, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. And never again will I destroy all living creatures, as I have done.

As long as the earth endures,

seedtime and harvest,

cold and heat,

summer and winter,

day and night

will never cease.'"

Never again, God says, and it really has never happened again. The seasons have come and gone like clockwork ever since; mankind has continued its evil work but God has never visited his judgment on all of life. 

That's why even the bitter cold and snow of January is reassuring. As long as earth exists, there will be winter – it's part of God's promise to withhold judgment until the time is right. Winter, spring, summer, fall will continue to roll by, each in its turn, as regularly as the sun and moon swap places in the sky. These are God's signs of his faithfulness to us. 

This morning, I'm thanking God for winter. I'm thanking him that rather than venting his worthy wrath, he instead sustains us. I'm thankful that this January has followed December. Not that I'm surprised – God said it would.

righteous

Genesis 7:1-4 The Lord then said to Noah, “Go into the ark, you and your whole family, because I have found you righteous in this generation. Take with you seven pairs of every kind of clean animal, a male and its mate, and one pair of every kind of unclean animal, a male and its mate, and also seven pairs of every kind of bird, male and female, to keep their various kinds alive throughout the earth. Seven days from now I will send rain on the earth for forty days and forty nights, and I will wipe from the face of the earth every living creature I have made.”

There are a lot of things to admire about Noah, but one of the most significant is that he was the one man in the whole world that God found to be righteous. I don’t think I’ve given that fact enough consideration before now.

What that meant was that Noah lived in a culture that had turned away from God. Every one of his neighbors, each one of his friends, every single person he did business with, served something or someone other than the Lord. The only people he could have God-talk with were his own family. Worship was either a family affair or something badly distorted. 

Yet Noah remained steadfastly faithful. How did he do that?

It’s a pertinent, even important question for me. Every day I make choices about what to watch on TV, what music I listen to, whether or not to laugh at certain jokes or join in the gossip. The culture I live in urges me to objectify others, to look out for myself, to seek first the pleasures of this world. Seldom on television or at the movies or in front of the news stand am I encouraged to meditate on the word of God, or to pray, or to serve. 

How much of that worldliness that follows something other than God has tainted my thinking? Am I willing to accept the sins the world flaunts? Am I building my own kingdom instead of God’s, pursuing worldly success instead of holiness? Am I even capable of recognizing how worldly I’ve become?

Here’s the core question: amidst this toxic world, have I stayed pure enough that, like Noah, God has found me righteous? Because his judgment will fall on the unrighteous of our time as surely as on the drowned generation of Noah.

It’s discouraging until I realize that I don’t have to do this alone. The same God who saved Noah from the flood saved me from my own judgment. Jesus is my hope, the Jesus who died on the cross, rose again, and ascended to sit with God as Lord of the universe. God would not find me righteous on my own, but when he looks at me he sees the perfectly white robe of righteousness Jesus draped me with. There’s nothing for me to fear.

Which makes me all the more determined to please God. What an amazing thing he did for me! Rather than fearing his wrath, I want to resist corruption to glorify him. Compared to that, all of the other goals I’ve ever had seem insignificant.

only evil all the time

This morning, reading from Genesis 5 and 6, I was struck by a phrase that explains a lot.

The pertinent passage is Genesis 6 starting at verse 5: "The Lord saw how great the wickedness of the human race had become on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time. The Lord regretted that he had made human beings on the earth, and his heart was deeply troubled."

Only evil all the time – it explains 762 murders in Chicago in 2016, it explains the horror of Aleppo, it explains the victimization of drug addicts by criminal syndicates, it explains human trafficking. So many things can only explained by the word "evil," and all of them trace their origins back to the very beginning.

That's what the knowledge of good and evil, that forbidden fruit so coveted by Eve, brought us. It has corrupted our hearts so that, without God, every inclination of the thoughts of my heart are only evil all the time.

God hated it – he regretted ever making us. He committed himself and his son to an epic battle with evil that will not end until the earth itself is remade. That promise is seen in the rest of this passage. These two chapters are the start of the story of Noah, whose safe passage through the flood aboard the ark foreshadows the salvation that comes to all of us. 

It's good for me to be reminded that, absent from the redeeming work of Jesus, I'm not a good person. These bad things I still sometimes do are the dying struggles of the evil man I used to be, a bad person that I am slowly getting the better of. The good that I increasingly do, the love I show to my family, the service I give my church, the broken heart I feel for the abused of this world – those good things are all the proof anyone should need that in God there is hope for the most wretched sinner.

This change that God is working in me is the same change that I am called to work in the world. Just as each day I become less the old man and more like Jesus, each day I and all others like me are called to restore this world to what God planned it to be. That, not my job or my own empire, is my purpose here. 

It's good to be reminded of that at the start of the year.

desirable

There’s a reason “forbidden fruit” has become the cliché phrase that describes things we shouldn’t do. It’s an accurate description, for one thing – there are many things God has put off limits for me. But it also connects us with the original defiance of God that happened in the Garden of Eden.

I read that account again, in Genesis 3. The crux of the problem is in verses 3:6-7 “When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them were opened, and they realized they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.”

The original sin set a pattern that is so typical we call it human nature. First, for Eve, this forbidden thing was so alluring. Instead of turning her back on that tree and looking at all the other fruit she was permitted to eat, she wanted this fruit. And since she wanted it, she took it. 

Then, she got Adam to go along. That’s a thing we do too – we validate our own choices by getting others to do the same thing. In these two ways, Eve’s sin, even though it was the very first, turned out to be very typical.

The forbidden fruit looks so good, and it seems there’s always a snake somewhere telling me why I should try it. By contrast, obedience looks dull and unfulfilling. I guess that’s why Satan is called the Father of Lies, because those two are whoppers. And when I fall for either one, he must laugh.

The consequences were immediate. At the end of Chapter 3 Adam and Even are banished, and in Chapter 4, one son murders the other and the wandering exile Cain would give rise to the pagan tribe of Lamech. And from that point the world was a place with as much evil as good.

It seems fitting that the other part of our reading that I did today, Psalm 2, describes the nations raging against God. People become societies, and societies become nations, and those nations reflect what their citizens are like. It’s no wonder that so many nations set themselves against God.

I’m reminded that the beauty of forbidden fruit is a deadly lie. And I’m reminded that Jesus’ work of saving those who believe the lies should be my work too. 

routines

This year, I’m using a reading plan developed by my church to help our members with disciplined reading and overall knowledge of what God has done. I’m eager to see what new understanding and opportunities come from  partnering with my church in  my annual Bible-reading journey. 

As we get started, I read the first couple chapters of Genesis in the context of going back to work. I worked half-days last week, and had a couple paid holidays mixed in, so I’ve had a nice break, but tomorrow it ends.

This year is like many recent years: I start with mixed feelings. Some things I meant to do last year I intend to tackle with renewed discipline. I think maybe I can get them this year because there are a couple of things (I guess you could call the resolutions, but I usually don’t) that I did in 2015, for the whole year. But I wonder if I can sustain those. 

So my New Year’s thoughts tend to center around work and productivity. The fun of the holidays is over and it’s time to knuckle down. 

In that context, the familiar creation account that begins Genesis was inspiring, because in it I noticed how God approached work. God had his routine – each day he did a day’s worth of work, and the record of each day ends like this: “There was evening, and there was morning.” 

And then, to cap it all off, that first week ended like this: (Genesis 1:31-2:3) “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work. Then God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it he rested from all the work of creating that he had done.”

God’s work so far surpasses mine that comparisons don’t seem relevant, but it seems to me that He could have made the world any way he wanted to, and he did it this way. It makes me thing that as his image-bearer, I can approach my own work the same way. I can tackle each day as it comes to me, and at the end the sun will go down, and I can take satisfaction in what I’ve accomplished. Tomorrow will be a new day. And at the end of the week will be my day of rest. In that way, I can do what I need to do, and live faithfully as I do it.

With this idea in mind, I was especially struck by one of my favorite passages, Psalm 1:1-3, which says, 

“Blessed is the one

who does not walk in step with the wicked

or stand in the way that sinners take

or sit in the company of mockers,

but whose delight is in the law of the Lord,

and who meditates on his law day and night.

That person is like a tree planted by streams of water,

which yields its fruit in season

and whose leaf does not wither—

whatever they do prospers.” 

It seems to me that these two passages, describing as they do a routine of work and a way of living that delights in obedience, set in front of me the best resolutions I could have.