Blog Posts

Jacob: A Life of Conflict

Dr. Alan Redpath, a Bible expositor of a past generation, once said, “When God seeks to accomplish an impossible task, he takes an impossible man and crushes him!” What an apt summary of Jacob, the unlikely wrestler!

Jacob spent his life as a deceiver—known as the “Heel-Grabber” from the womb, the “Supplanter,” and the “Trickster”—yet he lands in the hall of faith. 

Out of Jacob’s entire life of 147 years, the writer of Hebrews singles out his act of blessing Joseph’s sons as the outstanding example of Jacob’s faith. As Jacob blesses Joseph and his sons, he recalls how God has been his shepherd and his guardian angel (Genesis 48:15-16). 

Consider the ways that God has been a shepherd to you to guide you and provide for you, or how God has been an angel to protect you from harm.

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On Juneteenth

Image by breefulmelange from Pixabay

Last year, President Biden declared Juneteenth a new Federal Holiday.  Since it fell on a Saturday, the observance was scheduled for the Friday following the President’s declaration on Thursday.  Unfortunately, I was already on a business trip to Washington, D.C., and it was too late to take advantage of the holiday. 

This year is different, and I recognize that I know the basics of the day—it marked the date the last slaves were set free from Galveston, Texas—but little more.  As a white guy, I don’t have to know that part of history.  It’s part of my privilege to determine whether or not I want to learn more…and I do, so I started to dig deeper using a Google search, and I learned that slaves weren’t finally free until a full 2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and 2 months after the end of the civil war!

Seeking to learn even more, I found the book On Juneteenth, written by Annette Gordon-Reed—a Harvard University Professor and Author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.  Reed penned this book during the summer of 2020 when she was on lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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