Thursday, February 19, 2009

Today's Passage: Genesis 25-26

As a kid I can remember running into the house after playing outside and saying, “I am dying of thirst!” Now at the time I knew I was not and my mother knew I was not, but that did not stop me from saying that phrase. Still today I catch myself saying that I am "starving"...when really, I am not starving, I am just hungry and ready to eat. It is not that I am an over-exaggerator (even though I am), it is that I crave instant gratification. I don’t play the lottery, but I know that if you hit the jackpot you get to choose between getting the money up front or spreading it out over twenty years. I always think "give it to me now", even though the tax penalty is close half of your original winnings.

We are a society built around instant gratification. Look at some of our inventions that we have come up with to fill that need: the microwave, internet-capable cell phones, and music downloads. There is nothing wrong with quick food, but everyone knows that cooking something on the stove or in the oven just tastes better than the microwave. There is nothing wrong with checking espn.com on your cell phone, but it takes twenty minutes to read the story on a two inch by two inch square screen. There is absolutely nothing wrong with digital music, but there is something about the sound of record that I just love (not that you can buy them anymore). The point is that instant gratification is not completely bad, but it kind of seems that it is never as good as if you waited.

The story of Jacob and Esau shows me that we as people have not changed much in thousands of years. The Bible is filled with stories of people who just could not wait and had no patience. This one stands out to me because of how little Esau gets in return for his birthright. You gave up your birthright for lentil soup and bread? Seriously, at the least he could have asked for a steak and a baked potato. I have had lentils before, and they were not worth Esau’s birthright. Esau did not think about the long term ramifications of his actions. He was acting in the now and his brother Jacob takes advantage of that. As a side note, Jacob’s name actually means "he deceives". He sure lives up to the name by convincing Esau that his birthright is worth a bowl of lentil soup.

When we read about this account I think it is important to look back at verse 23. God knew that Jacob would eventually rule over Esau, because God knows that we struggle with instant gratification. If God knows we struggle with it then who better to go to those struggles with than God himself? God is our helper in this. We need to be diligent and pray that God will give us patience when we seem to be incapable of mustering it up ourselves. God wants the very best for us and the great thing is He knows what that is, so we must trust that in His timing, not ours, everything will work out.