Author Archive for: meiling

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 32:13-32.  Let’s go!

Genesis 32:13-21 (NIV)
13  He spent the night there, and from what he had with him he selected a gift for his brother Esau:
14  two hundred female goats and twenty male goats, two hundred ewes and twenty rams,
15  thirty female camels with their young, forty cows and ten bulls, and twenty female donkeys and ten male donkeys.
16  He put them in the care of his servants, each herd by itself, and said to his servants, “Go ahead of me, and keep some space between the herds.”……

On verses 13-21:  To hopefully appease Esau’s anger and soften Esau’s heart, Jacob sends a series of lavish gifts to Esau consisting of one herd of animals after another.  The picture of Jacob sending all these gifts to Esau makes me think of the way God sends gift after gift in the form of people and other blessings that God places in our lives.  As John 1:16 says, “From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another.”  God sends us many gifts so that we would know His heart.  The gifts were always meant to point to the Giver.  Yet our tendency is to focus on the gifts and forget about the Giver.  So the next time you think about the blessings in your life, remember this: God gives us blessings not just for our enjoyment, but even more so that we would know the Giver of those blessings, because knowing the Giver is the greatest blessing of all.

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 31:45-55.  Let’s go!

Genesis 31:45-48 (NIV)
45  So Jacob took a stone and set it up as a pillar.
46  He said to his relatives, “Gather some stones.” So they took stones and piled them in a heap, and they ate there by the heap.
47  Laban called it Jegar Sahadutha, and Jacob called it Galeed.
48  Laban said, “This heap is a witness between you and me today.” That is why it was called Galeed.

On verses 45-48:  Getting ready to make a covenant with Laban, Jacob and his relatives pile stones in a heap.  (I find it funny that later Laban says that he did it in verse 51.)  Laban calls the heap “Jegar Sahadutha”, which means “witness heap” in Aramaic.  Jacob calls the heap “Galeed”, which means the same thing – “witness heap” – in Hebrew, Jacob’s mother tongue.  It’s a reminder that Jacob and Laban came from two different cultures and spoke two different languages, which likely contributed to the misunderstandings between them.

Hi GAMErs,

Today’s passage is Genesis 31:33-44.  Let’s go!

Genesis 31:33-34 (NIV)
33  So Laban went into Jacob’s tent and into Leah’s tent and into the tent of the two maidservants, but he found nothing. After he came out of Leah’s tent, he entered Rachel’s tent.
34  Now Rachel had taken the household gods and put them inside her camel’s saddle and was sitting on them. Laban searched through everything in the tent but found nothing.

On verses 33-34:  Laban painstakingly searches in the tents of his daughters and their maidservants for his household gods but is unable to find them.  Little did Laban know that his daughter Rachel, who had stolen the household gods, was hiding them inside her camel’s saddle and sitting on them.

What can we learn from this?  Here we find Laban frantically searching for his household gods and unable to find them.  But earlier the one true God was searching for Laban and found him, speaking to Laban in a dream (see v24).  That’s a major difference between the God of the Bible and the gods of many other faiths.  With many other faiths, philosophies and religions in the world, it’s about human beings searching for God.  But in the Bible, God searching for human beings.