365: Genesis 47-50 (Day 16)

Israel worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. (Genesis 47:31 – NIV)

This is one of my favorite verses in the Bible. I can envision this old man (even though some might say he was young for 130), full of years and full of life, looking out over the land of Goshen, but not seeing the fields or the sheep. He was seeing the years of his life – conspiring with his mother to get his brother’s blessing, the 20 years of working for his Uncle Laban, wrestling with God (at this point he automatically and without thinking reaches down to massage his hip), his reunion with Esau, the death of his sweetheart Rachel, the loss of his son Joseph, Jacob—an accomplished deceiver—now deceived by his sons, the famine, his astonishment at hearing Joseph was alive, and then seeing his beloved son once again, second-in-command over all of Egypt!

What a life! There was good and there was bad. There were things that had brought him shame and things that had brought him honor. There were times God’s will was accomplished in his life not in cooperation with Jacob, but in spite of Jacob. It was like a tapestry being woven from the day of his birth, some of the threads beautiful, and some ugly. Only now, in looking back was he able to see the hand of his God—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and yes, the God of Jacob.

And these thoughts make me think of a day in the future—who knows how long it might be? I don’t have a walking stick yet—that I may have the opportunity to look back over the days and years of my life. Will I see God’s hand in the bad days as well as the good? No doubt. Frederick Buechner (pictured at left) wrote: I believe . . . all of us have not only the right to be happy no matter what but also a kind of sacred commission to be happy—in the sense of being free to breathe and move, in the sense of being able to bless our own lives, even the sad times of our own lives, because through all our times, if we keep our ears open, God speaks to us his saving word. Then by drawing on all those times we have had, we can sometimes even speak and live a saving word to the saving of others. [1]

It is a wondrous thing to see our lives from God’s vantage point, to bless both the good and the bad, and see God’s hand in every day.

Do you know what Buechner means when he writes about blessing both the good and the bad of your life?

[1] Frederick Buechner, Telling Secrets (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), 102.