December 17

Day 278: Our Present Arms Race

There are places in Genesis when it all seems pretty ridiculous. Chapters 29-30 fit that. In this case, it's all within one family.

Jacob finds himself married to two women. Sisters. (What could possibly go wrong?) He had wanted the younger, but had to also take the older as part of the deal. And they were competitive. Very competitive.

In that day, sons were currency. Sons were wealth. A workforce to work the land, like a Fortune 500 company. The more the sons, the more the production, the more the honor and prestige. For the Mom, and for the Dad too. And in theory, the more sons produced, the more the husband loved their Mom. In theory.

Leah, the older one, the fertile one delivered Reuben, Simeon, Levi Judah, Issachar and Zebulun. Fertile indeed. A regular baby machine. If that wasn't enough, Leah also gave her servant to Jacob to add to her collection, birthing children in her name. Leah's servant delivered Gad and Asher.

Rachel, the younger one, wasn't so fertile. Not able to produce on her own, she also gave her servant girl to her husband. This servant produced Dan and Naphtali. (This giving the servant girls had to be messy from the get go, if having two wives wasn't already messy enough.)

Rachel eventually does deliver Joseph, and later Benjamin. Jacob is now the father of twelve sons. He is a rich man. But I'm surprised he had time to ever get anything else done.

These twelve sons fathered what would be the twelve tribes of Israel. Comprising God's chosen people, Israel (Jacob's name later on.) All of this borne out of an arms race. Women who each wanted their husband's preferential love, and weren't afraid to battle for it.

Out of this competitive, messy family God created a people for Himself. Not unlike how God has taken a whole pile of messy people through the ages, and created for Himself a people, the Church.

The beginnings may be messy, but the beginnings do not determine the ends. God's grace is seen in how he takes what is severely broken, and reconstitutes that broken thing to wholeness and health, for His glory. There is always hope, because there is always God.

It may seem to us that our world is more broken than it has ever been. It may seem that our North American churches are more dysfunctional than ever.

Christmas is for us the celebration of God intervening in our broken world. It is the story of how God did for us what we could not do for ourselves. It is the narrative of how His grace superimposed over our dysfunction, our mess.

We now live in the midst of another, more pervasive arms race. The affections of our hearts are divided between conflicting powers. Will Jesus receive our preferential love? Or will our dysfunctional culture capture our hearts?

Christmas is, among other things, an opportunity to again consider our heart's affections. To reflect on how God sent His Son Jesus to retrieve us from ourselves; to create in us a people after His own heart.

Even in the midst of our present arms race.

-Mike Rydman, Lead Pastor, Radiant Church Juneau