Hairy arms
Tonight we did a family quiet time and read the story of Jacob dressing up as Esau in order to steal his father’s blessing. (You can read the story in Genesis 27.)
If you don’t know this tale it is a pretty crazy one.
It made me wonder how many times I pretend to be something I am not; how many times I try to look like someone else in order to get noticed or receive a word of blessing.
I have never wanted hairy arms. (What woman in this hemisphere in her right mind would?)
But I think that perhaps quite often my arms are, spiritually- speaking, more follically-endowed than I care to admit. In other words, I think there are days when I try to get noticed for what I am doing. I tell someone how I have blessed another because I want their blessing, their notice, and their praise. That is an ugly (and dare I say hairy) thing to be doing.
Isaac was blind. Not only did he have the wool pulled over his eyes, he had it put under his fingers too. He was duped into giving his fatherly blessing to the wrong son – the younger son – who was never meant to have it.
Coveting someone else’s blessings is a dangerous and dark work of the soul. It is complex, laborious, tiring and downright wrong. But we still do it. We still ogle at the insta photo of someone on the Island of Crete whilst we are in a windswept industrial estate in Slough. We want what we can’t have. We look at other people’s boyfriends, bottoms, bank balances or BMW’s and sigh. Then the sigh becomes envy, then jealousy.
The result of coveting never goes well. It doesn’t just get us into hairy situations, but it leaves us smelling bad and feeling bad too. Worse than this, like Jacob, we can be forced to run from those we were meant to love.
I have decided that I only want the blessings meant for me. I don’t want anyone else’s. Not just because that is selfish, but because it will stop me from getting what I deserve too. It is true that we sometimes have to wait for our blessing. It can feel as though everyone else around us is receiving the favour and the green light of God and we are ‘Billy-no-angels” in the corner, all alone.
But God sees the life that waits. He loves the person who works hard for their blessing. He will also deliver it in His perfect timing too.
So as I leave you tonight, thinking of this truth, I will speak the blessing of Isaac (Genesis 27:28-9) over those of you who are waiting for your own:
“May God give you heaven’s dew and earth’s richness an abundance of grain and new wine. May nations serve you and bow down to you.”
Amen