The Truth: Genesis 31:19-35
God allows us to stay rooted in the truth when the world schemes around us. The truth is sometimes hard to speak. The truth is sometimes embarrassing to reveal. The truth can sometimes make us feel like others will be disappointed in us. While these statements can be accurate, only in the truth do we find forgiveness, healing, and life.
Jacob chooses to leave when Laban was out sheering his sheep. Because of God’s blessing upon Jacob, Laban also had a significant herd. Sheering sheep by hand takes time. You must wrangle the sheep. Then you must cut the wool away from the sheep while the sheep resists. Hand sheering a sheep without electric sheers may have taken thirty minutes on average. When that is over, you take the heavy wool, store it somewhere, and move on to the next sheep. Finally, you take all that heavy wool from the whole flock and move it to wherever it is going to be skirted, washed, and carded. To say it is a process is an understatement. No wonder Laban didn’t realize Jacob left.
Once Laban recognizes everyone is gone - including his household gods – Laban pursues. As Laban draws close to Jacob, God comes to him in a warning and cautions him against doing anything rash. God protect Jacob from Laban and his scheming.
Stories like this give a genuine perspective into typical human interaction. Jacob leaves quietly because he wants to get out without having to figure out how to navigate another of Laban’s schemes. Rachel steals the family gods, sitting upon them and using her gender to prevent Laban from discovering her theft. When Laban comes to Jacob, instead of being honest, he glosses over his true feelings by using a made-up story about how disappointed he is at not being able to send Jacob off with great fanfare.
The only person who is honest in this story is Jacob, who owns the fact that he left the way he did because he feared Laban’s retribution. Twenty years of learning to trust God has bought him the ability to be honest when others reel back from exposing the truth. Jacob’s relationship with God allows him to be sincere about his actions, his thoughts, and his motivations. Laban lies, Rachel schemes - and never gets caught, but Jacob stands in the truth.
We often act this way. Human beings are great at glossing over the truth, putting spin on the truth, lying about the truth, or scheming so the truth is never revealed. We see this behavior at every layer of society from our community leaders all the way down to our children in school. As we see with Jacob, our relationship with God helps us break through this cycle. God allows us to stay rooted in the truth when the world schemes around us.
