Have You Set Aside Time To Meet With Your Brothers and Sisters and With God?
Good Morning Friends,
We all have lots of meetings. Jesus had assemblies of believers. He had the upper room. He had synagogues. He had the Temple. He had the hills. He had the homes of friends. He had prayer times. In today’s scripture Jacob has a meeting with God in a place that was not familiar to him and in this place he receives a reaffirmation of the blessing of Abraham and a brief but deliberate disclosure of God’s active involvement in the lives of people. Today’s stories are about a meeting and a blessing. And as I contemplate it I think about all the meetings I will have today and those I had yesterday and realize that there is a message for me in today’s scripture and the blessings God wants me to have in my life. Like the Father to his prodigal and angry sons, we are to realize that we are family. Have You Set Aside Time To Meet With Your Brothers and Sisters and With God?
Scripture: Jacob left Beer-sheba and went toward Haran. He came to a certain place and stayed there for the night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, the top of it reaching to heaven; and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. And the LORD stood beside him and said, “I am the LORD, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your offspring; and your offspring shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and all the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place–and I did not know it!” And he was afraid, and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
Genesis 28:10-17 (NRSV)
Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So he divided his property between them. A few days later the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country, and there he squandered his property in dissolute living. When he had spent everything, a severe famine took place throughout that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed the pigs. He would gladly have filled himself with the pods that the pigs were eating; and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired hands have bread enough and to spare, but here I am dying of hunger! I will get up and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me like one of your hired hands.”‘ So he set off and went to his father. But while he was still far off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion; he ran and put his arms around him and kissed him. Then the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you; I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his slaves, ‘Quickly, bring out a robe–the best one–and put it on him; put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. And get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!’ And they began to celebrate. “Now his elder son was in the field; and when he came and approached the house, he heard music and dancing. He called one of the slaves and asked what was going on. He replied, ‘Your brother has come, and your father has killed the fatted calf, because he has got him back safe and sound.’ Then he became angry and refused to go in. His father came out and began to plead with him. But he answered his father, ‘Listen! For all these years I have been working like a slave for you, and I have never disobeyed your command; yet you have never given me even a young goat so that I might celebrate with my friends. But when this son of yours came back, who has devoured your property with prostitutes, you killed the fatted calf for him!’ Then the father said to him, ‘Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours. But we had to celebrate and rejoice, because this brother of yours was dead and has come to life; he was lost and has been found.'”
Luke 15:11-32 (NRSV)
Message: The book of Genesis is filled with stories about brothers and sisters and their interactions. There is Cain and Abel, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Ismael, Jacob and Esau, and Joseph and his bothers for starts. The storyline of each holds great drama and it is not too difficult to us to imagine them still relevant for the spectacle of both personal and world affairs today. Perhaps we can learn. I think that is what Jesus is building on all these stories in telling the story of the Prodigal and in not giving us the ending to the story but leaves it up to us to figure out. And here we might just see that our meetings with God prepare us for the other meetings we must face. It is here that we discover that sometimes God’s blessings make it difficult to focus on God….that comfort is usually not the avenue to maturity. In today’s scripture we have meetings about a blessing but it is also a meeting intertwined with meetings that are to come between Jacob and his brother Esau and God and in the New Testament the meeting between the Father and his two sons. Jacob was blessed to see God but he was on the run a fugitive. His desperation…his discomfort with a head on a rock pillow causes his eyes to see things they had never seen before. Sometimes hardship is a great place to see God. Sometimes even though it is hard to get up and write this message, there is a blessing in it that was not what I expected….a blessing that prepares each of us for meeting with our spiritual brothers and sisters…a blessing not about worldly things but spiritual things….about a Father’s love and grace.
Pray we realize that God is with us as a companion. Pray we realize that He will watch over us. Pray we realize that He will guide us. Pray we realize that we have His personal guarantee. Pray we experience the presence, promise, providence and power of God. Pray that our perspective on life be changed. Pray that we stop just caring about ourselves. Pray we experience salvation from our sins, transformation in our lives and reconciliation in our relationships made possible through the mediator between heaven and earth…between God and man….Jesus. Pray we realize that there is more to life than rewards and punishments. Pray we realize there is mercy and that were are to share the experience of it with our brothers and sisters.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 