MInTheGap

My father relayed the answer my sister had to the following question:
Why was it that God chose Jacob over Esau?  Because “Abraham, Isaac and
Esau” would sound funny.  It is one of the age old questions, why did
God choose Jacob and say he hated Esau.  Did he look down through
Esau’s life to see the many bad choices he would make?

Last night’s reading brought us to the point of Esau’s third marriage. 
This guy just didn’t get it.  He sold his birthright for a mess of
pottage, he marrys two women from the Caananite land, and when Jacob
gets sent away to find a wife from Abraham’s family (and for other
reasons too), he thinks that’s the problem and goes out and married a
third woman– one from Ishmael’s line!  Now, granted, Jacob was the
supplanter, he did decieve his father, “stole” the birthright, and even
will fleece Laban in a little while here, but how could Esau miss the
mark so badly?

It’s hard to think of this as a time where
there would have not been a complete Bible available.  Isaac probably
told his sons about God, and they would have heard about all of what
had happened so far.  One would hope that Esau and Jacob would have
been told about the difference between Cain and Able’s sacrifices.  One
could easily imagine Isaac telling them about how Rebekah was selected
from his home, and yet Esau still made choices for himself.

How about you and I?  It’s easy to look back at Esau and see where he
made his mistakes.  It’s especially easy when the most we see about him
are his mistakes!  Yet Isaac loved him more than Jacob (not that
parents should have favorites) for more than the fact that he made good
venison.  There must have been redeeming qualities within the mistakes.

Do we make colossal mistakes in our lives that we live with the
consequences of– sure we do.  My mom says “We live with the decisions
we make” and that’s what I take away from Esau.  He kept trying to
please his family and kept goofing it up because he guessed at what he
needed to do.  We have no excuse.  We have God’s complete revealed
Word.  Think about it…

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