A phrase of Jesus’ – which has always been good wisdom – is supremely hard to live: Stop looking at the speck in your neighbors’ eye when you have a plank in your own!  First remove the plank from your own eye so you can see clearly!  I don’t know about you, but I have always found it easier to spot what is wrong with others rather than soberly look at my own stuff.  Why?  Perhaps we have a propensity to justify our behaviors, actions and feelings so that we seldom are in the wrong.

Read Genesis 27:18-29.  Jacob, in a moment of choice about whether to deceive his father, must have spent some time justifying his behavior.  After all, didn’t his brother give up that birthright?!  Yet why wouldn’t Jacob be honest with his dad and share that he was the rightful owner of the blessing? Why go through such a scheme of trickery?!

Perhaps he believed dad would never bless him.  Perhaps he thought Esau might say that he never gave away the birthright.  Perhaps Jacob wanted something so bad that he would go to any length to receive it. That’s the thing with living like this—we can often find every reason to act in a way that our souls cry out NO! And yet, he receives the blessing and the stage is set for the rest of his story as the great leader of his people.  Amazing grace…that saved a wretch like me…