The Good Portion

Imagine moving into a house without closets, without cupboards, without shelves, and without furniture. You stack up all your boxes. You sift through piles of clothes to get dressed. You move ten boxes to find the one thing you need. You empty out five more to find something else. In all your sifting the confusion spreads. As the chaos grows, you cry out in exasperation: This is no way to live!  This is no way to live at home, and it’s no way to live with God’s Word. The Bible is not disordered, but it is big. We feel overwhelmed by it. We don’t know where to start, and we don’t have the furniture we need to make sense of it all. We know there are some helpful bits here and there, but half the time we can’t find them when we go looking. Much of the rest we don’t understand at all. We don’t know what goes where, so we stick with the few things we know and work around the rest as best we can.  If you feel this way, you are not alone. This is why the Holy Spirit gives the church teachers,

The conspiracy against Joseph was no theory. His brothers really did hate him. They really did plot to destroy him. With Judah as the ringleader, they really did sell him into slavery and convince their father he had been killed by a wild beast. Their conspiracy was a success. Joseph was as good as dead. He was a slave, bound for Egypt.  We can only guess at his emotions: confusion, disillusionment, rage, grief. Joseph lost a lot more than his freedom; he lost his father, his little brother, everyone and everything else he’d ever known and loved, along with any illusions he might have had about the goodness of humanity. He should have been bitter. He should have been as defeated as his brothers wished him to be. Yet everywhere he went regardless of the misery of his circumstances—even as a slave with no human rights, even as a prisoner falsely accused—the dignity of his conduct inspired confidence and respect. He served his masters faithfully, with all his heart. And he prospered, ulti

Jacob was a born wrestler. Literally. Much to the distress of his mother, he spent his time in the womb struggling with his brother. Despite his best efforts, he was born in second place, his hand still grasping his brother’s heel, clinging to a birthright that wasn’t his. Jacob means “takes by the heel,” an idiomatic way of saying, “he cheats” (Gen. 25:22-26). I can imagine his mother, Rebekah, thinking Awww! What a cute little cheater! But what is adorable in a baby, is not so cute in a grown man. As he grew, it became clear that Jacob was never going to win any physical battles with his swarthy older twin. But there is more than one way to wrestle. The cleverer of the two, Jacob outwitted his brother to gain the birthright and, at the urging of his mother, deceived his blind father to steal his brother’s blessing. Jacob got what he wanted, but his wrestling tore his family apart. Esau, furious over his losses, plotted to kill his brother. No match for the physical threat, Jacob fled