If this is your first viewing, please see my Introduction before reading this.
8 January. Genesis chapters 25 -27
The saga of the patriarchs moves on a generation with the birth of Esau and Isaac, twins with a troubled relationship from before their birth. They must have been very different characters, Esau the manly “Daddy’s boy” and Isaac the stay-at-home cook, his mother’s favourite. Esau cannot have been very bright to fall for Isaac’s “sell me your birthright for a meal” trick, or maybe he thought it was meant as a joke. But Isaac, and later his father, seem to have taken it seriously and it had implications for future generations. When I was about ten I lent my cousin a small amount of money and got him to sign a note promising interest at 10% a month. He never paid it back, and if enforced now it would probably amount to more than national GDP, but I have no intention of trying!
Rebekah is one of many women in the Bible whose difficulties having children – in her case after twenty years of trying – were overcome when God granted a miraculous pregnancy in answer to prayer. But not everyone who suffers in this way has such an outcome, and let’s spare a thought for childless women we know, praying that they may find fulfilment in other ways.
We sometimes hear of “water wars” in the world as an increasing global population stretches a scarce resource, but it is nothing new. Isaac has to re-open wells that a rival ethnic group have sealed up after Abraham first dug them, and meets opposition for doing so. But eventually the one at Beer-Sheba is found acceptable, and a covenant with King Abimelech is sealed there in a repeat of a similar story from Abraham’s time. Pray for those people and parts of the world, especially the nomadic tribes of Ethiopia and the Sahel, who struggle to find water in their wells today. May they find water, and live in peace with their neighbours.