Know that I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” “All the families of the earth shall be blessed in you and in your offspring. There is no “my way or the highway”, “shape up or ship out”, ultimatums, or threats of hellfire and damnation. That’s why God is able to show up in Jacob’s dream entirely un-phased by Jacob’s penchant for self-destruction. I’m inclined to believe that divine omnipotence is rooted, not in the ability to dole out eternal hell and punishment, but in the ability to take it. The reservoir of divine love is literally bottomless. Everyone has a breaking point when they just can’t handle any more trauma.īut God isn’t subject to the same kinds of human limitations we are. Some of us have even been on the receiving end of that kind of tough love.įrom a human perspective, it’s sometimes necessary because each of us has only a limited amount of resources in time, money, and emotional energy. Sadly, there are plenty of parents, spouses, siblings, friends, and children who have had to have that very difficult conversation with someone they love. You have no job, no home, no blanket, and a rock for a pillow! You seriously need some help and if you don’t stop destroying yourself and ruining life for everyone else, then I can’t be around you anymore.”

One can imagine the Almighty appearing to Jacob in his dream and saying, “Jake… what are you doing, man? I mean, come on… look at yourself! You’re sleeping outside you’ve got no place to go. If anything, one would think that this would be a prime moment for God to stage an intervention. Like a drunk who got kicked out of the bar at closing time and missed the last bus, but is too ashamed to call home for a ride, he lies down to sleep outside and cuddles up to a rock for a pillow. God shows up in the middle of Jacob’s dream while he is on the run. Just like the farmer in Jesus’ parable of the wheat and the weeds, God is content to let the good and the bad grow together in Jacob, accepting him as he is for the sake of what he might be. Fortunately for Jacob, God has much worse taste in people than I do. If I were God, I wouldn’t bother with such an untrustworthy character, who more often than not chooses the wrong thing, even when presented with every opportunity to do the right thing. Even after having this visionary experience of God, Jacob would go on to another fourteen years of lying, cheating, and stealing from his own extended family in the foreign country to which he flees (and from which he will once again flee after another bout of deception).Īll in all, Jacob comes across as a pretty bad guy. When we encounter him in today’s Old Testament reading, he is a fugitive, on the run from the law and a brother who has sworn to kill him. He lied to his own father and cheated his brother Esau out of everything that was rightfully his. No matter who you are or what you’ve done, chances are that you will be able to read about the people in the book of Genesis and feel a whole lot better about yourself.” I tell them, “Genesis (Jacob’s story in particular) is one of the only books I can read and find people more messed up than I am… and God never gives up on them. I told my clients to pay special attention to the story of Jacob. They heard that I was a member of the clergy, so they would say, “I want to read the Bible, but I don’t know where to start.”įor these people so early in their recovery from debilitating addictions, many of whom had lost jobs, families, health, and freedom in pursuit of compulsions that now made them feel ashamed of themselves, I could recommend no better place to start reading the Bible than at the very beginning: the book of Genesis. Back when I was a substance abuse counselor, my clients would sometimes come to me when they were working on the “Higher Power” part of the Twelve Step program.

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