Genesis 26: Settling in Gerar
Monday, October 28, 2019
We might take time today to pause and reflect on the marvelous stories we find in this first Book of the Bible; we see humanity with all foibles and glories. Today’s Noontime is no exception to this for today we read about Isaac, the precious son of Abraham and Sarah, and we anticipate that we will hear only good of him then we will have miscalculated God and his plan for us. We will have missed the valuable lesson that the patriarchs and their families who established and passed on the covenant with the Living God are to be seen as ordinary people who make ordinary mistakes in their ordinary lives. These people about whom we read are us.
When we allow ourselves to spend time with a commentary as we sift through the details of this story, we will see that the players in this drama behave much as we do today when faced with moral, physical and political dilemmas. They weigh odds and consequences. They make decisions. They have regrets, experience deep suffering and great joy. They find that life holds no guarantees as they duplicate the labor of previous generations by re-digging Abraham’s wells. They plan and execute deceptions and endanger their tribe. They work toward and achieve success and so become objects of envy; and they are eventually sent away from the place they have made their home. They are persecuted, separated and marginalized, and they watch all that they have gained through labor move into the hands of others. Their prosperity has become their curse. Isaac, Rebekah, Abimelech and the others live out their lives struggling against their shifting circumstances and as they do they teach us much.
There was a famine . . . We too, suffer from famines and dry times in our lives, asking God what we are to do and how we are to do it.
So Isaac settled in Gerar . . . We too, make decisions about our families, our health, our jobs, hoping that we have not missed an important detail.
Isaac was afraid that if the men of the place would kill him on account of Rebekah because she was very beautiful . . . We too, enter into deception impelled by our fears.
Isaac sowed a crop and reaped a hundredfold that same year and the Philistines became envious of him . . . We too, experience prosperity that can bring problems of its own.
Isaac went up to Beer-sheba . . .We too, move house, change jobs, enter into and leave relationships as life pushes and pulls at the details of our living.
And all the while, as we are re-digging the wells first begun by our ancestors and as we call and count on God, others watch us to see what holds us up through struggling, what brings us peace in turmoil, what sustains us in desperate times. And we might pray that despite our deceptions, and despite our fears we will have lived a life worth watching. We may pray that our own Abimelech will come to us to ask: We are convinced that the Lord is with you, so we propose that there be a sworn agreement between our two sides – between you and us. Let us make a pact with you.
And when Abimelech offers this tangible sign of peace, let us also pray that we will be generous in our reply as Isaac is. And let us hope that we too, prepare a feast of celebration that God has been with us and that despite our weaknesses . . . we have witnessed to the goodness of God.
A re-post from October 7, 2012.
Image from: http://www.pastorsebastiaan.com/2011/01/revitalization-before-church-planting/
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