Tender Shepherd

"The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel" by William Dyce (1806-1864)

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Genesis 29:1-18

TO CHEW ON: "Then Jacob kissed Rachel, and lifted up his voice and wept." Genesis 29:11


Today's reading paints a very human Jacob. A tent-dweller versus outdoorsman Esau, he was a mama's boy (Genesis 25:27-28). Now, due in no little part to his and his mother's cunning, he (at 40+ years - Genesis 24:34) was forced to leave home due to twin brother Esau's threats to kill him after Dad dies.

Traveling east, he arrived at a well where shepherds were gathered with their flocks. He inquired if they know his mother's brother Laban, and they did! Then, even as they were talking, who should come along but Laban's beautiful daughter Rachel with her father's flock.

Jacob promptly removed the stone from the well (he may have been the indoors type but was obviously no wimp), watered Rachel's flock, told her who he was, and kissed her in a patriarchal greeting, so overjoyed at finding his family he broke down in tears.

We know, from reading the whole story, how his trials were just beginning. But God had big plans for him. To put them in motion, Jacob needed to leave home and live under the discipline of Laban. Laban would give him a taste of his own treacherous nature and Jacob would, as a result, develop into a man of character. Unlike Esau who, intent on instant gratification, sold his birthright to quell hunger pains, Jacob would end up working 14 years for the girl he loves.

The happy 'coincidences' in today's reading did no doubt reassure Jacob, as he thought back on them years later, when he again felt Godforsaken. They would remind him that God had led him, caring for him tenderly and personally—the shepherd of a human sheep, if you will—all that time.

God is the same with us. For if we examine our histories we will see how God's hand has been with us too, moving the pieces on the game boards of our lives in the big things, like meeting our spouse, to the little, like reminding us that we need to drop by the store. As Jesus put it:

" ' My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.' " John 10:27,28.

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for watching over me as closely as you watched over Jacob. Help me to remember this and be reassured when I feel alone and afraid. Amen.

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Coincidence or providence?

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Jeremiah 32:1-15

TO CHEW ON: "Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord." Jeremiah 32:8b

How do we know when an idea, plan, or course of action is not merely our own, but comes from God? In Jeremiah's case it started out as an apparent coincidence. He relates his experience in Jeremiah 32.

His prophecy of the impending Chaldean takeover of Judah had offended king Zedekiah. To punish Jeremiah for saying such negative things and to keep him from spreading them, Zedekiah kept Jeremiah locked up.

One day Jeremiah reported, "The word of the Lord came to me." It's possible that he wasn't sure it was the word of the Lord at first. For this 'word' was the crazy idea that his cousin Hanamel would come to him and ask him to buy a field.

If he believed his own prophecy, buying a field at this time would make no sense, because the Chaldeans would be taking over the land. So perhaps at first he discounted the thought.

However, soon after, Hanamel was there, in the court of the prison, asking Jeremiah to buy that field. It is then he makes the statement: "Then I knew that this was the word of the Lord." These two things — the revelation, followed by its coming to pass — convinced him that God was in this.

Has something similar happened to you? It has to me. For instance while on vacation a while ago, I visited an old friend, with whom I had been out of contact for several years.

She told me that during the cleanup of a basement flood a few weeks earlier, she had come across some writing I had sent her years earlier. She sat down, read it, and was reminded of our friendship. "So when I got your call," she said, "I wasn't even that surprised."

I didn't get any prophetic meaning from my friend's advance notice of my visit, like Jeremiah did over the buying of his cousin's field (Jeremiah 32:13-15). But I did interpret it as God's little message to me, saying — See, I know about this visit. I even set it up by giving your friend this little hint you were coming. I am in such things.

Let's not be hesitant to interpret seeming coincidences as God's providence. Then let's proceed with confidence, knowing that He is in even the mundane details of our days.

PRAYER: Dear God, please open my eyes to see and recognize Your activity in my life. Amen.

MORE: Bible Coincidences

Here are some of my favourite Bible incidents that (I'm sure you would agree) are more than coincidental:

1. Abraham's servant, given the job of finding Isaac a wife, journeyed to the country of Abraham's relatives. The first girl he met was Rebekah. She offered to water his camels just after he prayed that the right girl for Isaac will do just that. (Genesis 24:1-26).

2. The Shunamite woman, whose son Elisha had raised from the dead, moved to Philistia for seven years during a famine. When she and her family returned, she went to the king to ask to have her land restored to her. It just so happened that the king was quizzing Gehazi, Elisha's servant, about the miracles Elisha had performed and Gehazi had told the king about Elisha raising the Shunaminte's son from the dead just before she was ushered in to see the king (1 Kings 8:1-6). Of course she got her land back.

3. King Ahaseurus of Persia discovered the account of Mordecai saving his life on the very night that Haman was in the palace intending to ask permission to have Mordecai killed on the gallows he had built (Esther 6).

Can you think of more?

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Do your 8-12-year-olds have daily devotions? Point them to Bible Drive-Thru.

"Doubting nothing"

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Acts 11:1-18

TO CHEW ON: “‘Then the Spirit told me to go with them doubting nothing.’” Acts 11:12

“In my lifetime I have had certain, if few, remarkable instances of the presence of God,” writes David Adams Richards in his book God Is: My Search for Faith in a Secular World. “From my very earliest days, I recognized this presence now and again…These instances most often came in ways I least expected from the time I was a child.” (God Is. David Adams Richards, Location 732 – Kindle Version)

Richards goes on to relate incident after incident where happenings from his life spoke to him of divine providence, with events dovetailing in amazing ways.

• As a youth he was in a high speed car crash but escaped without a scratch while a school buddy was killed in a freakish traffic mishap going a mere 30 miles per hour. 
• He came across a gift he had meant to give his dying mother 20 years to the day after her death. 
• A stray paper poking from between books on his shelf turned out to be a photograph. It was a picture of a little girl and her mother – the girl he and his wife helped look after when her immigrant mother discovered she had brain cancer. In the picture, the mother, whose cancer had just been discovered, was still beautiful. He found it years after the mother’s death, but only an hour before the girl, her father and grandmother were to arrive to visit (they had moved back to Europe).

In our reading today Peter, when called to task by the Jerusalem apostles over eating with an uncircumcised Gentile (Cornelius) had exactly such a miraculous “coincidence” to relate. His vivid vision, followed by Cornelius’s servants at the door, and the readiness of Cornelius and his family to hear what Peter had to say convinced the apostles that this new development was actually a God-thing: “When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God saying ‘then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life’” Acts 1:18.

Have you had such evidences of God in your life? I have. For example, I often find that things I read or hear relate directly to something I am writing. I will find a quote that catches my eye in a book or internet article and the next day that very idea presents itself in the Bible reading for this devotional or some other piece I’m writing.

Let’s watch for the many ways God tells us, “I am here – right beside you, going with you through this day.” Let’s gratefully accept the signs of His presence “doubting nothing.”

PRAYER: Dear God, Thank you for these little assurances of Your presence. Help me to be alert to them, and acknowledge You in them today. Amen.

MORE: Looking for God
David Adams Richards is an award-winning Canadian writer. He is most known for his fiction. His writing, which has been compared to that of William Faulkner, has won many awards (Governor General’s, Giller Prize).

Links to articles about God Is.

"Canada's literary community gets religion all wrong" by David Adams Richards - excerpts from God Is.

"Author finds God is in the details" by Stuart Laidlaw

God Is by David Adams Richards (available from Amazon.com)

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

God kept him awake

"The chronicles are read to King Ahasuerus" - James Tissot

TODAY'S SPECIAL: Esther 6:1-13

TO CHEW ON: "That night the king could not sleep. So one was commanded to bring the book of the records of the chronicles; and they were read before the king." Esther 6:1

Insomnia probably feels to you and me more like an annoyance than an evidence of God's sovereignty. Yet here God used the king's insomnia to put in motion a train of events that showed the Jewish people He was very much in charge. It started with Haman required to lead Mordecai, mounted on the king's horse) around the streets of Susa shouting, "Thus shall it be done to the man whom the king delights to honor!"

For superstitious Haman and his wife Zaresh, the meaning of Mordecai's honor at Haman's hands was also clear. Zaresh: "If Mordecai, before whom you have begun to fall, is of Jewish descent, you will not prevail against him but fall before him" - Esther 6:13.

The Bible assures us of God's sovereignty in all of human affairs in other places.
Job speaks of it in his repentance prayer:

"I know that You can do everything
And that no purpose of Yours can be withheld from You" - Job 42:2.

David buoys up his faith with this fact when he's running from Saul:

"I will cry out to God Most High,
To God who performs all things for me" - Psalm 57:2.

Do you believe that God still works for His children in such mundane ways as waking people or keeping them awake? I do. For example, I'm sure you've heard stories of people waking suddenly with the sense that someone they know is in trouble or need,  spending the night hours praying for him or her, and discovering later that their wake-up call came at precisely the time the person they prayed for needed their prayers.

Let's acknowledge God's sovereignty in all the events of life—even bouts of insomnia, the need to turn back and get something we've forgotten, the wrong turn we make in the road, the rainy day that was supposed to be sunny...

PRAYER: Dear God, thank You for this example of You working through King Ahasuerus's sleeplessness. Help me to see the details of my life through eyes of faith, knowing that You put everything together with divine precision and foreknowledge. Amen.

MORE: Got Any Rivers?

An old camp chorus popped into my head as I was thinking about God's abilities  this morning. Did you sing it when you were a kid?

"Got any rivers you think are uncrossable?
Got any mountains you can't tunnel through?
God specializes in things thought impossible
And does the things that others cannot do."

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Unless otherwise noted all Scripture quotations are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

"Doubting nothing"

TODAY’S SPECIAL: Acts 11:1-18

TO CHEW ON: “‘Then the Spirit told me to go with them doubting nothing.’” Acts 11:12

“In my lifetime I have had certain, if few, remarkable instances of the presence of God,” writes David Adams Richards in his book God Is.: My Search for Faith in a Secular World. “From my very earliest days, I recognized this presence now and again…These instances most often came in ways I least expected from the time I was a child.” (God Is. David Adams Richards, Location 732 – Kindle Version)

He goes on to relate incident after incident where happenings from his life spoke to him of divine providence with events dovetailing in amazing ways. As a youth he was in a high speed car crash but escaped without a scratch while a school buddy was killed in a freakish traffic mishap going a mere 30 miles per hour. He came across a gift he had meant to give his dying mother 20 years to the day after her death. A stray paper poking from between books on his shelf turned out to be a photograph. It was a picture of a little girl and her mother – the girl he and his wife helped look after when her immigrant mother discovered she had brain cancer. In the picture, the mother, whose cancer had just been discovered, was still beautiful. He found it years after the mother’s death, but only an hour before the girl, her father and grandmother were to arrive to visit (they had moved back to Europe).

In our reading today Peter, when called to task by the Jerusalem apostles over eating with an uncircumcised Gentile (Cornelius) had exactly such a miraculous “coincidence” to relate. His vivid vision, followed by Cornelius’s servants at the door, and the readiness of Cornelius and his family to hear what Peter had to say convinced the apostles that this new development was actually a God-thing: “When they heard these things they became silent; and they glorified God saying ‘then God has also granted to the Gentiles repentance to life’” vs. 18.

Have you had such evidences of God in your life? I have. For example, I often find that things I read or hear relate directly to something I am writing. I will find a quote that catches my eye in a book or internet article and the next day that very idea presents itself in the Bible reading for this devotional or some other piece I’m writing. Let’s watch for the many ways God tells us, “I am here – right beside you, going with you through this day.” Let’s gratefully accept the signs of His presence “doubting nothing.”

PRAYER: Dear God, Thank you for these little assurances of Your presence. Help me to be alert to them, and acknowledge You in them today. Amen.

MORE: David Adams Richards is an award-winning but new-to-me Canadian writer. He is most known for his fiction. His writing, which has been compared to that of William Faulkner, has won many awards (Governor General’s, Giller Prize). He makes his home in Toronto and the Miramachi area of New Brunswick.

Links to articles about God Is.

"Canada's literary community gets religion all wrong" by David Adams Richards - excerpts from God Is.

"'Who's 'conformist?' David Adams Richards on atheists" by Douglas Todd - Vancouver Sun

"AUTHOR DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS TO DISCUSS GOD IS: MY SEARCH FOR FAITH IN A SECULAR WORLD IN AN ON-STAGE INTERVIEW WITH MARK TUNNEY" from News @ UNB

"Author finds God is in the details" by Stuart Laidlaw

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I purchased God Is. Kindle version, through Amazon.com. Clicking on the title and image links will lead you to my Amazon Affiliate pages.

Do your 8-12-year-olds have daily devotions? Point them to Bible Drive-Thru.