Today’s passage is Genesis 31:1-16. Jacob notices that Laban and his sons resent him. God tells him to go back to Canaan. He tells Rachel and Leah how Laban has repeatedly cheated him but God has made him prosper. He tells them his dream and the vow he made at Bethel. His wives tell him to do what God says.
Are you resentful of others? How has hardship brought you closer to your spouse? Have you forgotten your vow to God?
When I was asked to become principal of my school, I knew this was God’s will for me.
To make sure I understood that, he had me receive two other invitations from India. I and others prayed hard about them.
I refused each, and then came the offer from my current school.
I recognized God’s hand in the repeated offers and I accepted the third one with a condition.
I said I would accept if God promised to be with me and help because I knew I could not do the job without him.
He has guided me and inspired me.
He has sent the right teachers and kept them for the right length of time before sending them elsewhere.
When I made mistakes because of my pride and self-trust, he did not allow any harm to come to me, just as he protected Jacob in verse 7.
He provided me with a dutiful Christian wife and trained me in the Wooridle spiritual community, both of which are essential to my being able to lead my school.
Without them I would instantly fail.
It has been healthy and humbling for me to learn that.
At the beginning of this school year, God started nudging me toward a clear vision for my school, which I was reluctant to embrace because of my small faith and my big fear.
Because of my timidity before this vision, God provided pressures from both outside the school and inside to articulate that vision.
From outside the school came a big threat to the school that had to do with the past and my response to it. It was like Laban’s promise of giving Jacob the speckled lambs.
There were hardly ever any speckled lambs and my fear was that there never would be. Like Jacob, I worked with all my strength (6) and lost sleep and health for months. But suddenly everything was speckled lambs!
Unlooked for and unexpected praise came in and suddenly the ordinary things I thought I was trying to accomplish were being seen as unusual.
I was having to articulate a vision more and more.
The small publicity made me uncomfortable and continues to do so because my trust in the Lord to see me through this is not as much as I hoped it was. Next month I have to explain it further to a group of innovative educators because I’m now being considered one.
Like Jacob, I have to go somewhere I know but I’m reluctant to go without the support of those closest to me. The irony for me is that I already have their support. “Do whatever God has told you” (16). I’m the problem.
So today God arranged for me to talk to students, fellow administrators, some students, and a few teachers about parts of the vision. Each time I talk, I flesh out the vision a bit more, and God gives me a bit more trust in him.
Application: write the vision.
Lord, let me trust in you as my rock and fortress. Turn my fears into speckled lambs. Let me rest in you, I pray.
