Sitting on the dock

Sitting on the dock
June 2010

Friday, February 10, 2012

Learning to take a God's-eye view of Jerry Springer situations

So I was reading along in Genesis yesterday about Jacob being deceived by his future father-in-law Laban. He worked for seven years to get Rebekah and he gets Leah instead (surprise!). I don't even want to go into how he didn't know it was Leah; that's a conversation for another day. Anyway, so Laban basically says, "Well... just take Leah for now and I'll give you Rebekah if you agree to work for me some more." Jacob agreed to this. I tried to put myself in Jacob's shoes... I would have been angry at Laban. I would have felt betrayed and tricked. I would have felt kind of bad for Leah because she wasn't the one I really wanted (and Leah knew this). I would have felt horrible for Rebekah but I would wonder if she was in on it and therefore was also part of the betrayal. She might have been innocent in which case I would have felt bad about having consummated with Leah. My point is that this was a pretty Jerry Springer kind of situation. What's amazing to me is that God knew all of this, planned it all out, and the 12 tribes of Israel came from this mess. It made me think about all the times in my life when I've thought to myself, "This is so messed up" or "Life is so stinkin hard sometimes" but God knew it all, planned it all, and brought His will out of it anyway. All this in spite of what it looks like to us from our perspective.

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