Streams of Mercy - Across the divide
After [Jacob] had sent [his family] across the stream, he sent over all his possessions. So Jacob was left alone... (Genesis 32:23-24).
Oh God, our heavenly Father, what an amazing privilege it is to live within Your grace and favor! David expresses it so well, Blessed are those You choose and bring near to live in Your courts! We are filled with the good things of Your house, of Your holy temple (Psalm 65:4).
The good things of Your house are many and varied—poured into our lives according to Your grace and wisdom. You give us skills, talents, work, protection, peace, and provision. You give us spiritual treasures, a delightful inheritance, and material prosperity. And most importantly, You give us relationships—family, friendship, and community.
You created us, Father, and You understand our need for closeness, companionship, mutual love, and support. And You understand the damage, the distress and the destruction created when the natural priority of relationship is displaced in favor of money, possessions, ambition, rivalry or other substitutes.
You've shown us that from the moment sin entered the world, distrust and dishonesty, blame and self-interest struck at the core of human interactions, creating conflict and discord, hatred and havoc. And in the story of humanity, we see the messes and the muddles, the tussles and the tangles from relationships gone awry.
But we also see Your divine hand of grace, healing wounds, mending brokenness, building bridges—as in the account of Jacob and Esau: Having stolen Esau's birthright, Jacob eventually came to a reckoning. In great fear and distress, (Genesis 32:7) he prepared to face the brother he had defrauded through deceit, and duplicity—the brother who, at their last contact, had vowed to avenge himself through murder (Genesis 27:41-42).
Lord, we understand so well Jacob's deep anguish over the broken relationship with his twin brother. Even as he recognized and acknowledged Your favor—the good things You had poured into his life, he struggled with this relationship void. His prayer reveals the great cloud over his happiness—the struggles with fear, anxiety and guilt—that could not be erased even by all his numerous acquisitions:
“O God of my father Abraham, God of my father Isaac, Lord, You who said to me, ‘Go back to your country and your relatives, and I will make you prosper,’ I am unworthy of all the kindness and faithfulness You have shown Your servant. I had only my staff when I crossed this Jordan, but now I have become two camps. Save me, I pray, from the hand of my brother Esau, for I am afraid..." (Genesis 32:9-11).
He finally stood before You, open and bare, apart from family, separated from possessions, forced to wrestle with only what was real, and valuable, and lasting. And You opened up Your streams of mercy, and brought healing, and forgiveness, and restoration.
O Father, who but You could bring forgiveness to our wrongs, healing to our traumas, reconciliation to our rifts? Who but You could bridge the divides of hate, revenge, bitterness, misunderstanding, irreconcilable differences?
We give You our fractured relationships, our divided camps. Oh, give us the willingness to yield the deep and necessary issues within—to surrender all we hide behind, and come to accountability, ownership, and surrender.
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