I receive over 15 daily devotionals on my phone, from different generally unsolicited sources. It is not possible to read all of them, in addition to one’s own devotion for the day, so they usually get deleted, to make space on the phone. One morning, I had a nudge to check up the topics for the day in each of those daily devotionals as received at the time. This is what I found:
The Preacher's Diary
JACOB THE FRAUDSTER
Jacob, his name meant deceiver. And the name also made the man. In current Nigerian parlance, we could properly refer to him as a “419” man, an “OBT.”
When his father was about to pass on to glory, the old man ‘placed an order’ for a special bush meat pepper soup. The father specifically stated that it had to be meat from ‘abroad’; from the wild. The ‘job’ (or ‘tender’) was given to Mr. Esua his first son. However, Jacob became aware of it through some privileged source, and decided to supply the ‘goods’ in the name of Esau the man who had been properly awarded the ‘contract,’ all without any consultation with Esau. Jacob simply went and had a ‘board meeting’ with Rebekah his senior business partner, and decided to supply the ‘pepper soup’ made with ‘local materials’ instead of the ‘foreign meat’ from the wild, as the ‘company,’ Isaac the father, had requested. They went to the backyard and killed two goats and, ‘overnight,’ were ready with the ‘material’ which would normally have taken a longer time to prepare, especially as the major component had to come from ‘abroad,’ not from the backyard.
The Course, and Cause, and Kinds of Curses (Part 2 of 2)
5. A Notice or a Pronouncement?
To the fallen man, God said, “cursed is the ground for thy sake.” God appeared to have cursed the ground, not the man; yet the ground was cursed “for thy sake” – for the sake of the guilty man (Genesis 3:17). God proceeded to say that man would thenceforth eat his bread “in sorrow” and “in the sweat” of his face (vv. 17-19).
It might also be argued, and very well so, that God’s statement to Adam was not the pronouncement of a curse but merely an announcement of consequences that the failure and Fall had already brought upon Adam: “cursed IS…” All the same, God never directly cursed man.
The Course, and Cause, and Kinds of Curses (Part 1 of 2)
- Forces from a Different Dimension
We live in a physical world ruled by laws all of which are not physical. Some time ago, a very worried priest wanted audience with me over strange crises in his marriage. As we talked, he recalled that the ancestor of his lineage is said to have warned or cursed that none of his descendants should marry from the clan that his wife had come from; that anyone would suffer specified consequences if they did. But that was in the dismissible distant and inconsequential past. All the same, he had noticed with unease that some of his kin, who had also defiantly or otherwise married from that neighbourly clan, had experienced the related concerns in their marriage, some of those concerns ending sadly in divorce. It was like the diseased pointing finger that one denied but could not hide. Was his marriage being targeted by forces from a different dimension?
IRONIES OF FULFILMENT
To Isaac I gave Jacob and Esau. To Esau I gave the mountains of Seir to possess, but Jacob and his children went down to Egypt.
Joshua 24:4, New King James Version
- Sons or Lands?
To Isaac, God gave the gift of sons. To Esau, God gave a territory. To Jacob, there was no apparent inheritance given. He was sent off into exile. What does that mean? Which inheritance is nobler: sons or lands or ‘Nothing’? To one, He gave men; to the other, He gave property; and to the last, nothing. Which is a more attractive possession in the short term, and which in the long run: sons in whom to sacrificially invest for a lasting harvest, or a ready vast land to cultivate for a sooner harvest of perishable crops?
THANK GOD FOR STUBBORN ENEMIES
20 For the Lord hardened their hearts and caused them to fight the Israelites. So they were completely destroyed without mercy. 23 So Joshua took control of the entire land … as their special possession …. So the land finally had rest from war
Joshua 11:20, 23; New Living Translation.
The sun warms, but it can also burn. God is love, but He is also consuming fire. Normally, nobody wants wars; but sometimes that it what it takes to gain peace and enlarge territory. Peace lovers would often avoid a fight at every possible cost, therefore, sometimes, God Himself sets them up for the very fight, as a means to permanently eliminating their foes and enlarging their territory.
WHEN REALITY CONTRADICTS PROPHECY
Human comprehension of spiritual reality is sometimes at odds with that reality, which does not eliminate the reality. Sometimes what God assures is not what we see. In fact, what He assures sometimes seems to run so counter to common sense that we are forced to wonder if we were not being fooled.
LEADERSHIP AND SERVICE: A PARABLE OF WISE TREES
- When Nature is Teacher
Nature provides us with profound lessons that we often miss in our haste through labyrinthine libraries and the riddles of barren sages. In “The Tables Turned,” William Wordsworth the English Romantic poet appropriately and passionately calls, “Come forth into the light of things, / Let Nature be your teacher.”
