We are studying the story of Jacob and his family in our weekly Bible Study. It’s a story that reminds us why the Bible is a better book than we give it credit for. Jacob is a scoundrel, a liar, and too clever by half. He ends us fathering the Twelve Tribes of Israel because he’s outsmarted by his father-in-law Laban, who tricks him into marrying the daughter he doesn’t want to marry so that he can marry the one he does want to marry. There’s more sex, family dysfunction, and intrigue in this story than there is in Desperate Housewives. God is, at least to the protagonists, almost an afterthought, a bit player in their family drama. But through it all, God is working God’s purpose out. Through Jacob’s line the blessing that God has promised the world through Abraham’s heirs is perpetuated.
I asked everyone, “How does this story affect the way you look at your own dysfunctional family?”
We believe in a God who blesses, not curses. We also believe in redemption. Redemption isn’t just God making good happen in spite of bad–it is God turning the bad on its head and using it to create good. As Joseph will tell his brothers at the end of Genesis, “You intended it for evil, but God meant it for good.” Genesis tells us the story of several generations of a dysfunctional family that despite all their problems, God used for redemptive purpose. In fact, God not only uses them for redemptive purpose, God redeems them.
I know many of us come from families in which terrible things have happened. We should never minimize those things. The challenge is to trust that God can somehow make blessing arise out of the most surprising and even awful circumstances. Maybe it isn’t good that seems equal to the bad–for instance, one might decide that because I suffered I’ll use that experience to alleviate the suffering of others. Still, the fact that you are able to discover some good to come out of difficulty is an act of faith.
It’s also part of forgiveness. Forgiveness involves letting go–releasing hold of those things which we regret or resent. Our inability to forgive holds us back from healing and moving on. If we can see–or create!– the good that comes from a difficult past; or if we can love our family members as the people they are today even as we remember the wrongs they did us yesterday–if we can, as one of our prayers says, “redeem our memories”–that is, remember without blame–we open a door for blessedness to come today.
I wish I could source a quote that I learned when I was studying pastoral care. A great pastoral psychologist once wrote that the choice we often face is “between a religion of nostalgia and a life of faith.” In between those two is the present, active grace of God, enabling us to redeem the past to create a present and a future of blessedness, for ourselves and for others.