God is good, not nice

Genesis 27:1-40

The pain of this passage is excruciating. I find it very hard to read. There are a ton of adjectives for describing our Lord, but one of them is not “nice.” Wouldn’t it sound odd to pray in church, “God you are so nice.” It should sound odd.

God wasn’t nice to anyone in this story. I said this is a painful story. The circumstances hardly need explaining why. You read it, you feel the pain too. An old, blind man, for heaven’s sake, tricked by his own son at the prompting of a conniving mother, favoring one son in this way over the other. I mean, the whole thing is just heart and gut wrenching.

What a painful way to see that the blessing to be given isn’t really Isaac’s to give after all. And this is so even though he has a lot invested in it. He recognizes the responsibility of passing it on. He asks for the food to give him the strength to do it. There’s a lot riding on what he does and how he does it. But it’s not his. Neither are Rebekah in her scheming, or Jacob in his wimpy following, the actors they think they are. The blessing came from God to Abraham and passes through Isaac, but it’s not his blessing to give. On the human level of tradition, everything screams out that this is all wrong. No! Take it back, do it again. Cut. Rewind. Let’s have the DVD interactive version and go back a couple of scenes, just like you get to tell Timon and Pumbah which trail to take.

Nope. Not just because even the human understanding of the bestowing of blessing means it’s like an arrow that can’t be called back; it’s because it’s what God has arranged.

A generation will run a faith community. But it’s not really us. There is a coming generation. The blessing must be passed on. They should take our ways. They should learn what we do. We’re putting an awful lot of effort into this. Missing family time. Dealing with conflict. Trying to do a lot with a little. Loving "Blessed Be Your Name" and "He Reigns." We’re putting so much into this we’d better work hard to pass it on. We even see who it should be passed on to.

But maybe God has something different in mind. Maybe God will turn it in some other direction. Bless someone else. Use means we know nothing about instead of the things we have loved. If we’re smart the difference from Isaac is that we’ll know all along that what God does isn’t what we’ll expect. So we’ll find peace in the God who isn’t nice.

Prayer:
Our Father in heaven. May your name be honoured. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. And just use whatever I’m working at to do what you really want done. Yes, you will anyway, but let me be a willing participant. Through Christ. Amen.