Shalom! I pray that
your Thanksgiving holiday was safe, happy and relaxed and if you were brave
enough to venture out on black Friday, you were not trampled in the crowd. I am terribly behind in my writing and will
try to get caught up this weekend. I spent the Thanksgiving weekend out of town at my great-nephew's wedding and had the most fabulous time with my entire family, grandsons and all! The picture above is that nephew, Adam and his bride, Andrea. How wonderful that God seems to place into my life the very circumstance of the Parashat for each week. This week is about a wedding of sorts.
As we
begin this Parashat, (which is actually last week’s lesson), we pick up Jacob
as he is in the process of finding a wife.
I find it ironic, that throughout my life as I have read and been taught
this section, I never really thought about many of the story’s realities. One of those realities was Jacob’s age, which
was 77 at the time. Did you think he was
much younger? I grew up thinking he was
probably 20-25, so the reality of this love story isn’t about a couple of young
hot lovers is it? This isn’t quite a
Romeo and Juliet kind of story, although it has been painted that way. Boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl,
boy thinks he is marrying girl but is deceived by father-in-law, boy gets her
sister and now must work seven more years to get the real love of his
life. See what I mean.
I think it’s time we
took a REAL look at this Parashat to see what the Word really does say and what
it doesn’t say. Along the way, I think
God may have a word for you. OH and BY
THE WAY MEN! This week is for you. If last week spoke mainly to the women, God
has a special word for you in this one.
I didn’t plan it this way, but He did.
Now grab a cup of coffee, get comfortable and prepare to be
challenged. You may never have seen the
story of Jacob, Rachel and Leah in this light before.
Let’s start with what we do know about Jacob. Jacob was, as we established last week, a man
who dwelt in tents. By that we learned
he was a man who focused on the Lord God and serving Him only day and
night. Jacob was basically a man who
sought God with every fiber of his being as well as living every moment in
oneness with Him. He had also been this
way for 63 years and had never married when he left his father and mother to go
in search of a wife. He was sold out and
devoted with a single minded heart to God and God alone. I want you to keep that last thought in your
mind, because it is going to play a key role in this lesson.One thing we aren’t told in the scriptures, yet the sages have deduced from their readings and adding up of the age accountings in the scripture is a 14 year gap in Jacob’s life. The sages deduce from this that Jacob spent those years in the academy of Shem and Eber before going on his way to seek a wife. Whoa! A totally sold out Godly man needs to go to an academy to study more? Wow! What was he preparing for? I think we need to really, really take notice of this story! (Men are you paying attention yet?)
Now we begin our Parashat. Jacob is apparently leaving the academy and starting on the next leg of his journey when night falls. It is necessary for him to find a place to sleep and it just so happens that, as scripture puts it, he happens to be at “the place.” The Place is Mount Moriah, where Abraham bound Isaac and where the Temple would later stand. Jacob arranges the stones around his head and lies down and as he sleeps, God appears to him in a dream. In this dream, there is a ladder that reaches from heaven to earth and angels are going up and down. There is an entire lesson just on the ladder, but I’ll have to save that for another day. Oh well, got your curiosity up yet? Just a little hint; it wasn’t a ladder like we think of.
God speaks to Jacob, in this dream, and says He will give the ground upon which he is lying to him and his descendants. Jacob’s offspring will be as the dust of the earth and will spread out powerfully westward, eastward, northward and southward and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by him and by his offspring. God promises to be with him, to guard him wherever he goes and the Lord will return him to this soil for He will not forsake Jacob until He has done what He has spoken about him.
If you will recall, Isaac has already given Jacob a blessing
that says: “Peoples will serve you and regimes will prostrate themselves to
you. Be a lord to your kinsmen and your
mother’s sons will prostrate themselves to you.
Cursed be they who curse you and blessed be they who bless you.” “May El Shaddai bless you, make you fruitful
and make you numerous and may you be a congregation of peoples. May He grant you the blessing of Abraham to
you and to your offspring with you that you may possess the land of your
sojourns which God gave to Abraham.” Genesis
27:28-29, 28:3-4
Dad has pronounced a spectacular blessing upon him, sent him
out and now the God of heaven and earth is blessing him again! I cannot even begin to imagine how Jacob must
have felt when he awakened from that dream!
Joy beyond measure, I’m sure. Now
what? Well, I guess if Jacob is going to
have descendants like the dust of the earth….there needs to be a wife, you
suppose? Kind of hard to procreate
without a partner isn’t it? So on with
the journey, right? Oh no, not just
yet. First things must come first, to a
man of God. Jacob makes a pledge that if
God will be with him and guard him on his way and gives him bread to eat and
clothes to wear and allows him to return in peace to his father’s house and God
will be a God to him then the stone he set up will become a house of God and
whatever God gives him he will repeatedly
tithe to God.
I would love to take the time to break this story down into
little bits and pieces, but I do have a specific place to go with this one and
for that reason I will be traveling pretty fast from this point on. Jacob finds his way to a well where he meets
his future wife, Rachel. I have always
thought Jacob just fell head over heels in love with the sight of her that
day. Then I learned the truth about
Jacob’s age and thought, would a 77 year old man really fall deeply in love with
and be blown away by a beautiful young woman?
We know that Rachel was a
beautiful woman, the scripture tells us that much, but was there something more
about her? Did Jacob see a woman of
Godly character? Any man who is in touch with his spiritual side,
the way Jacob was, would surely know when he met a woman of spiritual nobility,
right? After all, the wife he chooses
must be the mother of a nation!
The problem with Rachel is that as much as she is revered and
held on a pedestal, there are some issues I could get into great depth on. Rachel does give birth to a deliverer, but seems
to mirror some of the traits we saw in Jacob’s brother Esau. (Wish I had the time to go into detail on
that one. Perhaps in the near future,
but not right now. They are after all
only my thoughts, not the Chassidic Masters!)
Could it be a possibility that for the first time in Jacob’s
life he was faced with something all of us are far too familiar with, a double-minded
heart? You may think you know what I
mean by this statement, but then again you may not. I want to explore this thought with you at
length and see how it applies to our lives in today’s society.
For the first time in Jacob’s life he was literally leaving
the “tents” to go into the “fields”. If
you recall from last week’s Parashat, tents refers to spiritual learning and
study and fields refers to the world where there is idolatry and
worldliness. The tents represent safety
and a place where there are no distractions, (the mountaintop experiences if you wish).
The fields however, are not necessarily bad all the time. Fields are where the crops are grown, but they
can also harbor danger. One of the
greatest dangers in a field is in seeing something alluring, just over there. You get caught up trying to find whatever is
alluring you and when you finally arrive at the object you have lost sight of
home.
Jacob, I believe was truly being tested in the fields. His purpose, (do you remember our lesson on
fractals? Now is a good time to go back
and read that one if you haven’t read it already), was two-fold. His immediate and future purpose was to bring
the tents to the fields. Are you following
me? His entire purpose was to bring into
the world a dwelling place for God and also a messiah, which he did. Stay with me here, if you don’t you’ll be
throwing stones at me. He became the
nation of Israel where the temple was eventually built and he did bring into the world a messiah, eventually (down the line)
another messiah and ultimately THE MESSIAH!
Oh man, I can’t wait to do the lesson on Messiah with you. (I only wish I could do this full time. My time is limited as you can tell. I am so far behind and have very little time
to work on these teachings. Oh well, God
knows when the time is right for each of these posts to be done. I will leave it in His hands.)
The Field of Distraction
Jacob has left the tents and traveled to the fields. His mission is to find a wife from his uncle’s
house. The first female he sees just
happens to be his niece and this also happens to be his first distraction, for she
is beautiful. Jacob goes back with her
to her father’s house and begins to work for him. I am sure Jacob has worked during his life,
since it seems he knows how to do those things, but now he has to work
in order to eat and now we have distraction number two.
Jacob asks Laban for
Rachel’s hand in marriage, but he seems to know that Laban will try to deceive
him so he makes it very clear which daughter he wants to marry. They agree on a dowry of seven years of labor
from Jacob and at the end of that time Laban deceives Jacob anyway and gives
him Leah, distraction number three. An
agreement is made for Rachel and a week later he weds Rachel with the promise
he will work seven more years as a dowry for her, now there are two wives and a deceitful father-in-law, distraction number four.
We have no record that Jacob ever strayed away from his
devotion to God, but this is what I want you to see with me. As more responsibility is added to Jacob’s
life, devotion became more difficult.
Spending time in God’s tents was divided between spending time in the
tents of his wives and also among the flocks and herds and trying to appease a
difficult, deceitful father-in-law. Does
this sound like your life, with the exception (I hope) of having more than one
wife?
Dedication to the Word of God is so easy on Sunday morning
or at a conference right up until the alarm clock goes off on Monday morning. Suddenly its business meetings and deadlines,
the battery’s dead on the car again, a recital at 6 p.m., did I remember to schedule
an oil change at the dealer? What was
that again? Am I taking the children to
school this morning or are you? I can’t
possibly fit another thing into my schedule.
Is there enough money in the checking account to pay the mortgage this
week? And property taxes are due by the
end of the month and now rumors are flying at work there might be a
layoff.
Distractions, distractions, distractions! Why must we always have to be in the
fields!!!!! I would love to stay in the
tents! The problem with staying in the
tents is that we would become obese while the rest of the world literally
starved to death from famine. (Almost
sounds like an analogy of the United States and Third World countries, doesn’t
it.) We quite possibly create many
unnecessary distractions, though. True
there are necessary ones such as family and work, but what is in our lives that
could be culled out? Do we need to tear
down the “idols” we have allowed to be set up in our fields and replace them
with tents?
If you are familiar
with much of the Old Testament, you know there are many times in the book of Kings
where you read about a king who allowed Asherah poles to be built in the
fields. Along comes a Godly king who
comes in and tears them down. Are there
Asherah poles we need to tear down in our lives? What activities are you or your family
involved in, containing no intrinsic value, which are mainly just time wasters? What about television? Do you sit, in the evenings, mindlessly watching
programming that would be considered to be “field material”? What about Church activities? Are they just that, activities, or is there a
spiritual purpose behind each and every one?
I have to confess, guilty of all charges!!! Busy lives.
Busy people. Everyone is, well,
just busy. A co-worker and I were
talking about it this past week. He said,
“I get so tired of doing the same thing every day. I get up, eat breakfast, go to work, go home,
change clothes, go work out, go back home, eat supper, take a shower and go to
bed, just to do it all over again the next day.” I said, “yes I know, we are creatures of
routine and complain about it, yet if anything interrupts that routine, well
then we complain about that also, don’t we?”
That’s when we both had a good laugh!
It certainly seems that everything in life tries to keep us from
focusing on God and growing spiritually.
We get in a little routine of spending more time in the Word and in
prayer and what happens? We have to work
overtime or we get sick or a child gets sick or an appliance breaks down or the
alarm doesn’t go off or there is a controversy at work which catches us smack
dab in the middle! The next thing you
know you are preoccupied with those matters and what were you going to do….oh
yeah you were going to spend time with God.
Guess you’ll have to do that some other day.
Field of Well Watered Soil
Why can’t we just live in a little spiritual bubble? Our problem is we think in the wrong
direction. As western thinkers we think
horizontally when we should be thinking vertically. Let me show you a new way of thinking. A new thought pattern will bring about an
action rather than a reaction in your lifestyle. (Just so you know, I am learning this along
with you also, as I am pointing toward you there are three fingers pointing
back at me!) I am going to call this the
Jacob principle. I really think most, if
not all of you, know this principle we just tend not to practice it. Our lives as westerners is not really
conducive to this practice and thought process.
We are loners, not communal. You’ll
see what I mean.
The Jacob Principle – Rather than letting life be a
distraction for your spiritual health, let your spiritual health be a
distraction for life. Let me give you an
example. If every part of your life was
filled with thoughts of God and what He thinks and wants, would you do
everything differently? The moment your
eyes opened in the morning, what would your first thought be? As you put on your clothes? As you make your breakfast? As you awaken your children? As you gather your belongings for work? As you go out the door? What about when you are driving down the road
to work or school? What would be
different about the way you went about your day on the job? What would happen when your children came to
you asking to participate in extracurricular activities? What would you do with your evenings? How would you spend your weekends or family
vacations? How would you handle the
breakdown of the dishwasher or the plumbing leak? What about the mechanic bill on the
mini-van?
Can you see anything differently in these scenarios? I want
to give you a little glimpse into the life of a practicing Orthodox Jew for a
moment and show you how we can learn from them.
They learned from their father Jacob.
And guess what? He didn’t have any
written word! For an Orthodox Jew
there is a book of prayers called, the Siddur.
The Siddur contains thousands of prayers. Each day begins with the first conscious
thought in the morning. As soon as a person
realizes they are awake, the following prayer is uttered from their lips; “I thank
You for returning unto me my soul with compassion, great is Your faithfulness!” Wow! What
a way to start off your day! From there
a prayer is said after each part of your day, i.e. going to the bathroom,
washing your hands, putting on your clothes, etc. There is a men’s Siddur and a women’s
Siddur.
Not only is an Orthodox Jew’s personal life regimented in
this way, but if that person lives in a Jewish community, it too is of the same
heart and mind. This means that all
Sabbaths, holidays and feasts are celebrated with one heart and mind. There is strength in numbers. We, as American Christians have a hard time being
of one heart and mind in our own homes, let alone our churches and
communities. What could be done to bring
the “tents” of God to the fields if we as Christians became single-minded
individually and jointly?
A Jew’s life is not only filled with prayers, but everything
in life reflects some aspect of the God he or she serves. From the way the challah bread is braided to
the lighting of candles and even the woman’s monthly cycle. Everything
is significant in that God can be seen and a lesson taught from it. Fathers even take seriously the command to
train up their children in the instruction of the Lord. Hmmm, now there’s a thought. The daily calendar is another way of
incorporating God into the lives of the Jewish life. There is an occasion every week and every month
to celebrate some aspect of God’s provision for them and the nation of
Israel!
We, on the other hand, take so much for granted and are so
nonchalant about the gifts we have been given.
It would almost seem as if we look for ways to get out of spending time
with God instead of trying to get out of other things in order to spend time with God. We have two basic celebrations each year to show
what God has done for us, Easter and Christmas and many churches cancel their
evening services on those holidays as well as any other holidays that would be
great times to spend thanking God for his provision.
Walk into any church in the United States on a Sunday
morning and there are fairly large crowds, but go back to those for the evening
service and you will be fortunate to see 20% of the morning crowd in return
attendance. (Probably isn’t 2% on Super
Bowl Sunday!) Drop back by on Wednesday
evening and it probably drops again to 50% of that 20%. The end result is probably only 10% of the
Sunday morning crowd is faithful dedicated churchgoers for those churches who
have three services each week. Many churches
have done away with the Sunday evening service due to a lack of attendance.
The bottom line is this; an Orthodox Jew takes every moment
of every day and especially every Sabbath very seriously. How serious do we even take the Sabbath? For that matter, and I am actually going to leave
everyone with this thought, how serious are we about any of God’s Word? When was the last time our prayers reflected our
thankfulness rather than a list of Lord pleases? I think I have given good examples of how thinking
differently can affect actions. How different
would our outlook be on life if everything we thought, did, ate or said was filtered
through the God filter? Well, go ahead and
talk amongst yourselves. As for me, I’m
a little verklempt! I think I’ll spend more time talking to God
and reading Torah and see how many Asherah poles I can tear down in my fields. One
of those poles may have to be fb, OH NO!
: ( Oh well, if that's what is necessary! Shalom! 
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