The Fugitive

January 15, 2009

Today's Reading: Genesis 29-30 and Proverbs 5

Today’s Proverbs reading is about how “a man’s ways are in full view of the Lord, and he examines all his paths”. In other words, what a person does, and why they do it is in complete full view of the Lord.

That is pretty scary. It means that everything we do and the motives thereof are all revealed to God. So if we do a good thing, it might not be a good thing if our motives are selfish. So yeah, we might give our money to the church, but if we’re only doing it because the Pastor’s watching, then our motives are entirely misplaced.

It is interesting in the light of today’s reading, which is about Jacob. In case you aren’t really following it, Jacob is left home on account of what he did to his brother Esau. He quickly becomes, for lack of a better word, a fugitive. On the road, trying to get away from his past.

Of course, like all the fugitives that we know from movies, like Richard Kimble from The Fugitive or even David Banner from the The Incredible Hulk, the fugitive is imprisoned to life on the road and compelled to do good things.

Yeah, that is one thing I like about the whole Jacob and Esau story: it sounds like it was taken from some soap opera and movie. It even has twins, for crying out loud!

In this part of story, Jacob has finally found a home with Laban. Sure, he is trying to do something good by working, but he is always doing something for himself in the process. I wonder if Laban saw that, which is why he gave him Leah instead of Rachel.

Later on, we find that Jacob learns a way to make the system work for him with the spotted and speckled flocks. In no time at all, he’s got quite a haul of the herd!

He also has a family, and children, and he does all he can to take care of them. I suppose we can call that unselfish. Still, for all of Jacob’s goodness, he’s always got that heavy burden of guilt hanging over him for what he did to Esau.

Did all of those good things that he did ever make up for the big old bad thing that he did. Ha! Not a fricking chance. In a way, Jacob reminds me of me. I don’t think I’ve ever cheating a brother out of a birthright, but man, only Jesus can help me out of this one.