Genesis can be so disconcerting, can’t it?

I was in a discussion about this yesterday with a colleague who has started studying the Scriptures in earnest this year, and she’d just read how Jacob and his mom lied to ensure he got the main blessing from his dad, Isaac, and basically how people lied and cheated and there seemed to be no consequences. With little time to formulate an astute answer, I responded that we have to take scripture as a whole in order to get the big picture. We didn’t have time for any further discussion, but this morning as I woke and prepared to dig into Genesis again, I think I heard something that could help all of us who come away disconcerted by the incremental chapters in people’s lives we encounter throughout Scripture. It is, after all, about the Big Picture.

All of Scripture points us to the immeasurable gifts God has given us – His grace, mercy, forgiveness, love, redemption and restoration. Stories in Scripture are not written to show us exact examples of perfection on the part of the patriarchs and matriarchs of old. These stories are about REAL people, not perfect ones; people who, just like us, can easily be tempted and led astray by fleshly desires. They are stories about people, just like us, who are disciplined by God in ways that drive us headlong into His immeasurable gifts, for God’s discipline is always for the purpose of redemption and restoration. The very fact that restoration happens between Laban and Jacob, and between Jacob and his brother Essau are amazing glimpses into these immeasurable gifts of God.

As Jacob spent those 20 years estranged from his homeland and safe from Essau’s threat to kill him for stealing his blessing from their father, Jacob was being humbled. He got to experience first-hand what it felt like to be cheated when he awoke in the arms of Leah instead of the arms of Rebecca – the one he worked seven years for. He was further humbled as he worked another seven years for the right to marry Rebecca, only to be continually short-changed by his father-in-law’s conniving schemes. Ten times, we are told, Laban changed the wages he’d promised Jacob. After 20 years Jacob was told by God to go back to his homeland, and Jacob was more than willing to face whatever consequences awaited him.

I’m impressed with the thought that all the time God was working on Jacob’s character, God blessed him and multiplied everything for him and his family. And unbeknownst to Jacob God was also at work in Essau’s heart during those 20 years. We know this because when Essau learned his brother was on his way home, Essau arranged a grand welcoming party – 400 people went out to welcome Jacob home, not to kill him as Jacob speculated could happen. Bitterness had not overtaken Essau. Instead those immeasurable gifts of God were in full operation as he reached out with grace, mercy, forgiveness and arms of love to this brother who had deceived their father and robbed him of a blessing. In this big picture we see God at work all along, restoring and redeeming what otherwise the fleshly nature would have completely destroyed. As we take hold of this big picture, we are given the opportunity to look at our own lives – at the struggles, the injustices, the years of frustration – and we get to see, as Jacob did after spending the night wrestling, the very face of our God. All along He has been FOR us. His redeeming love sustains us, matures us, graces us as He disciplines us to embrace his immeasurable gifts, instead of and in spite of our fleshly nature.

All along our own life’s journey we get to build altars of worship following those awful nights of wrestling with the ‘strong man’, and we get to declare with Jacob, “I have seen the face of God and my life is preserved.” (Gen 32:30) Likewise, when we witness the redeeming grace, the undeserved and freely bestowed grace of God as Jacob did in Essau’s embrace, we come to understand that we behold the face of God in the faces of others. Jacob declared to his brother “I have seen your face as though I had seen the face of God, and you were pleased with me.” (Gen 33:10)

A life disciplined by such a loving God, a God who understands our human weaknesses and struggles, is a life where peace reigns in the darkest of those struggles; it reigns when we feel like we have battled a strong man all night long, only to awaken to the face of God. It reigns even when we survive life’s experiences with a slight limp. It is precisely because we are human, not perfect – just as those patriarchs and matriarchs who have gone before us – that we comprehend the peace of God, knowing it is He who has stood guard over our hearts and minds all along, and in such moments we know it is always His great desire to pour upon us His immeasurable gifts of grace, mercy, forgiveness, love, redemption and restoration – and then to see us living lives that grace others in the same way.

Human, forgiven, redeemed, restored.

God’s heart . . .

God’s intention . . .

God’s immeasurable gifts

May God grant us the grace to see this for ourselves and for all the Jacobs and Labans and Leahs and Rachels and Rebeccas and Essaus that come in and out of our lives. As we do, we too will know we have seen the face of God, who has preserved our lives, and we will know that it is, after all, about the big picture.