Tag: Genesis

Providence

In 1973 a quarter was very valuable.  As children, we were worked hard – taking out the trash, washing the pets, raking leaves – to earn the quarter that would give us purchasing power for the weekly bike trek to the 7-11.  The lure of that quarter was great — so great, indeed, that my sister once sold me to a neighbor for just that princely sum.

Mr. Bailey was a kind man and he drove a school bus.  On warm spring days I would help him wash his bus.  His driveway was steep and perfectly suited to the task.  It was my job to man the hose.   I would mount the front steps of the bus and turn the hose, full blast, on the seats and the floor.  The sheer ecstasy of hosing out the inside of a school bus was something only a seven year-old boy can fully appreciate.

As dinnertime approached, my sister came to collect me.  No doubt, to my sister, I was a tedious and trying lad.  When she arrived, Mr. Bailey made an unexpected proposal.  What if he kept me and gave her a quarter instead?  She did not hesitate.  She gladly accepted the quarter and left me with Mr. Bailey.  My sister certainly did not hate me, it was just that she was sure a quarter was worth more than a little brother.

For Joseph, things did not turn out quite that way.  Though the youngest son in his family, he was given the privilege and the status of a firstborn.  His father, Jacob, loved him above his eleven brothers and gave him a princely robe that stood constant witness to his father’s favoritism.  To make matters worse Joseph was careful to report his brother’s misdeeds to their father.  He shared with his brothers his dreams that he would one day rule over them.    His brothers hated him with murderous rage and at the first opportunity seized him and sold him into slavery in Egypt.  As often happens in Scripture, however, their evil action towards God’s chosen man becomes the very act which leads graciously to their salvation.  Remarkably, many years later, Joseph meets and forgives his brothers, recognizing that “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.”

But Joseph’s story is not a mere illustration that bad things sometimes work out, rather it is a picture of God’s promise of a savior in Jesus Christ.  It is this promise that forms the focal point of God’s Providence.  Join us this Lord’s Day, March 11, as we examine Genesis 37 and consider how the story of Joseph anticipates the unfolding of God’s promises to rescue and deliver us from our deadly enemy.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Setting the Stage

A good story teller strikes a careful balance between preparing the reader for the climax and surprising him when it comes.   In a gripping tale, we sense what will ultimately happen, yet remain riveted to the unfolding action and gasp in surprise when the expected occurs.  Skilled writers accomplish this through literary techniques such as foreshadowing and flashback.   Far from destroying interest or inducing boredom, setting the stage for the climax only heightens anticipation and along the way creates imagery and categories of thought through which we process the moment when all the strands of the plot are at last woven together.

No story creates this effect more powerfully than the story of the God who rescues and redeems men, women, boys and girls who appear hopelessly enslaved by sin and death.   As the Bible unfolds this epic, the stage is set through the stories of many men, women, boys and girls whose failures and victories create anticipation, imagery and categories of thought to understand the power of the moment when the central hero, Jesus, declares “It is finished.”

The story of Joseph in the Book of Genesis is one of these stories.  More space is given to the life of Joseph than to any of the patriarchs.  His story involves intrigue, deception, power, heroism, joy and tragedy.  In it we see trial and triumph, forgiveness and redemption.  Joseph’s life story sets the stage for the climactic moment when God saves the world, frees slaves from the deadliest of tyrants, and leads the weary into rest.

Join us this Lord’s Day, March 4, as we examine Genesis 37 and consider how the story of Joseph anticipates the unfolding of God’s promises to rescue and deliver us from our deadly enemy.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Eye for an Eye

“Fool that I am, that I did not tear out my heart the day I resolved to revenge myself…. Hatred is blind; rage carries you away; and he who pours out vengeance runs the risk of tasting a bitter draught.” ― Alexandre Dumas, The Count of Monte Cristo

Dumas’ Count of Monte Cristo is a brilliant exposition of the Bible’s warning, ‘Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.”’ (Romans 12:19)   As Edmond Dantes sets out to avenge himself on the three men responsible for his imprisonment and ruin, he learns a terrible lesson — that the law of unintended consequences makes mere mortals poorly suited to avenge themselves in the name of perfect justice.  Dantes finds that his attempts to gain personal justice for the injustice done to him perverts justice and multiplies injustice toward others.  Every twist and turn of his perfectly planned and executed revenge meets with an unintended tragic end.

We are exhorted in scripture to be merciful to the wicked and ungrateful, as our Father in Heaven is merciful to us.  When the God commands men in the Bible to exact “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” it is with a view toward limiting vengeance and not encouraging it.   The warning is not to take a head for an eye or a life for a tooth.   God is perfectly just, but he is also a God of mercy and he calls us to act likewise.

But this is a great challenge for us who live in a world filled with injustice, abuse, and evil.  Can we trust God’s justice and vengeance?  Or must we take matters into our own hands?  How are we to respond when we endure abuse, injustice and evil as individuals and a people?  What is our duty?  What are our limitations?  These are hard questions, often with no easy answers.

Genesis 34 details the terrible account of the rape of Dinah, Jacob’s daughter.   Her wealthy and prominent abuser engages in an attempted cover-up, but seems sincere in remorse.   Her father seems wracked by inaction.  And her brothers avenge a terrible crime with an even more heinous and far-reaching response.   No one in the story sought counsel from God.  None of these responses forms a biblical precept for responding to abuse, but rather paradigmatic antithesis.  The failure of Jacob, Hamor, Shechem and Jacob’s sons to bring proper resolution is a foil for what is to come – the gospel.  In the gospel we find a God who is both just and merciful.  He alone can provide justice tempered with mercy, reconciliation and restoration in response to injustice, abuse and evil.

Join us this Lord’s Day, February 18, as we examine Genesis 34 and this consider how we respond to injustice, abuse and evil.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Gravity

Gravity is important.  While we take it for granted, it effects almost every detail of our lives. In Physical Science we learned that the force of gravitational attraction between two celestial bodies is a product of their relative mass and their distance from one another.   Scientific observation has shown that proximity has an exponential effect while mass has only a multiplying effect.   Mathematically, however, the force of gravity is inversely proportional to the square of the distance and directly proportional to relative mass.  In plain English this means that being closer is more significant than being bigger.

While this is true for stars, planets and moons, it is even more painfully true in our relationships.  When conflict, estrangement and sin enter our relationships the gravity of brokenness is more powerful in close relationships than casual ones.   It is much easier to politely excuse or ignore the person at a relational distance when they offend us or are offended by us.  But when it is a parent, sibling, spouse or child, the seriousness of the offense looms large and casts a long shadow.

Solomon put it this way.  “A brother offended is more unyielding than a strong city” (Proverbs 18:19).  The prodigious size of the “Relationships” section in any book store and the number of afternoon TV programs devoted to relational guidance — funded by divorce lawyers — are potent witnesses to our cluelessness when it comes to reconciliation.   We look everywhere except the Bible for guidance, yet the persistent theme of Scripture is reconciliation.  Every relationship is fractured by sin and the only path to reconciliation is the gospel pattern of forgiveness, confession, and repentance.

In Genesis 33, Jacob returns home to dangerous uncertainty.  His brother’s last words were breathed out in murderous threat and they have not spoken for 20 years.   No relationship is more broken than theirs. But before Jacob is confronted by Esau, he is confronted by God.  Only after he is reconciled to God is he able to be reconciled with his brother.  Join us this Lord’s Day, February 11, as we examine Genesis 33 and consider what this story teaches us about reconciliation.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions.

Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.

Moving Day

Inca Court was a little utopian outpost on the frontier of a fledgling dystopian America.  The small suburban Atlanta street where I grew up had only ten houses.  Until I left home for college, it was the only home I had ever known.  None of the families on our street ever moved in or out.  None of the parents in any of those homes ever moved in or out.  We never knew the curiosity of new neighbors and never coped with the stress of leaving Inca Court behind. There were no Moving Days on Inca Court. In a mobile society marked by constant transition, Inca Court was sociological anomaly.

My first significant move was phenomenally stressful – filled with logistical angst and existential self-doubt.  Was I crazy to leave the familiar, the comfortable, the settled, the influential, the known – even with its problems and challenges – for the uncomfortable, the unsettled, the uninfluential, the unknown?  Life transitions are fertile fields for lush and verdant anxiety, yet as followers of Jesus, we have been chosen to live a pilgrim life and to farm these fields.  Our God is always moving, always at work, even to this very day.  To be a follower means to follow – to follow a God who never changes, but often calls us to change, a God who never leaves or forsakes, but often calls us to leave and forsake.  Followers of Christ in scripture were often on the move, tracing the movement of God.

But… When do we go?  How do we leave?  How do we know?  How do we tell them we are leaving?  What will happen when we leave?  Or when we arrive?  Following God and leaving the familiar is tough.  In Genesis 31, Jacob senses it is time to go. God calls him to leave his in-laws and return to Canaan.  But like us, Jacob’s relationships are complex and complicated.  How and when should he leave?  How should he approach the issue with his family?  What will he leave behind and what will he find ahead of him?  Leaving is tough.

Join us this Lord’s Day, January 28, as we continue to trace the story of Jacob from Genesis 31 as he flees deteriorating relationships with his in-laws to return to Canaan, where his embittered brother Esau awaits.  In this account we see some critical truths about following God when he brings us to Moving Day.  We meet from 5:00 – 6:30 pm in The Commons at St. Andrews Anglican Church at 8300 Kanis Rd in Little Rock.  Click here for directions. Come with a friend you and join us for fellowship and conversation. We look forward to seeing you there.