Today is an important milestone for “The Whole Dang Thing.” What is that milestone? Good question! I am glad you asked.
I am officially halfway through Genesis!
And to commemorate the journey thus far I would like to share a haiku for our beloved Abraham who passed away at the ripe old age of 175.
God made a promise
To bless all nations through him
So Abraham went
Because Abraham’s story wasn’t really about Abraham. It was about the God who bound himself to Abraham for the blessing of all.
In the comments section, write your own haiku for Abraham. The best one will get a prize!
Genesis 25 marks a significant shift in the story. Abraham is dead and now we begin to focus on his son’s family. What will Isaac be like? What crazy adventures will he have? He is the child of the promise! What great things is God going to do through him?
And then I realized something very important: Isaac is boring.
He doesn’t really do anything! Here is a list of everything he has done so far:
- Married Rebekah
- Burried Abraham
- Prayed for Rebecca.
Not that these are bad things. They just aren’t very exciting. Isaac isn’t going to make any big headlines. He is just a normal guy who happens to be the result of an amazing promise from the LORD.
Maybe we shouldn’t always look at the flashy people. Maybe we miss the quiet ones who just want to love and pray for their families. Maybe God uses them just as much as he uses the spicy ones.
Spicy? Really? What does that even mean?
But still, we never even have an entire chapter devoted to him before we start talking about his much-more-fit-for-reality-TV kids.
Boys will be boys
Enter Esau and Jacob. The first real bad boys of the Bible. You just know their story is going to be great when the first thing ever said about them is “they struggled together within her.”
Esau is born looking like the missing link. Was that weird? Has anyone ever heard of a baby who was that hairy?
I wonder how Rebekah's friends masked their horror.
If Esau got the brawn, Jacob got the brains, and maybe the grip. You can see that even as boys, Jacob was plotting ways to get the thing he wanted from the beginning: the birthright of the firstborn.
Esau came in hungry and Jacob didn’t waste a second in trying to steal the birthright from him. That makes me think Jacob had been plotting it for a while. He was lying in wait, looking for just the right moment to pounce on his unsuspecting brother.
The birthright is mine! My Precioussssssss . . .
God sure knows how to pick’em!
So again, write a Haiku for Abraham. I will pick my favorite and do something nice for you.
The Whole Dang Thing 