Last Friday, I was at physical therapy, this despite the fact that I knew there was snow on the way. But the weather apps and people all said what little snow we got would melt on the streets and it was safe to drive.
And the drive to the physical therapist’s office was fine. It was lightly snowing and as a Florida transplant, I was proud of myself driving in the falling snow.
But as the physical therapist worked on me and put me through the paces, exercise wise, I noticed that the snow was falling harder, almost blizzard-like. Still I told myself it would be fine to drive, the snow would melt on the road just as it had the other day.
The physical therapist noted that the snow was now filling the cracks in the pavement. And some minutes later, we noticed the cars were covered in a fine, gauzy veil of white.
And still I told myself that it would be fine to drive—they hadn’t even canceled school.
When I walked out to my car a short time later, there was easily an inch or two of snow on the pavement. It was not melting. It was still snowing.
I told myself it was fine.
Five minutes later I slid through the intersection on the first left turn I had to make.
Fortunately there were no cars in the way, but let me say the journey home was fraught. At one point the snow turned to sleet and my windshield wipers trembled and shook as the ice built up on each one.
Adrenaline flooded my system. All I wanted was to do was get home—in one piece preferably.
I did make it home, eventually, and safely. But driving in that was a mistake. My senses had not betrayed me. What I saw visually said “Don’t drive in this!” But my own heart, my brain overwrote that in a failure of discernment.
What we see in today’s reading from what I will call Part 5 in our “Awkward Stories of Genesis” series, is a failure of the senses and discernment.
Isaac has had a rough life beginning with his father Abraham nearly sacrificing him when he was a kid to now, in today’s reading, his wife and son attempting and succeeding at conning him while he is on his deathbed. Rebekah, Isaac’s wife, wants Jacob and not Esau to get Isaac’s blessing, so while Esau is away, she both literally and figuratively cooks up a plan. She makes a big meal and then has Jacob put some goatskins on his arms and neck.
Then Jacob takes the meal to Isaac, hoping to deceive his father’s senses. Isaac is blind, but the smell of the food—he had asked Esau to prepare a meal—and the feel of Jacob’s arms covered in goatskin—Esau was, apparently a very hairy man, are almost enough to fool Isaac.
But Isaac’s gut tells him that something is off. The voice he hears is not Esau’s but Jacob’s,
so finally Isaac asks Jacob to come closer.
He smells his son and concluding that the man standing before him smells
of the earth, of nature, of the field, he believes that this is indeed Esau.
When you are a child hearing Little Red Riding Hood for the first time, you might be thinking, “Come on, who mistakes a wolf for a little old lady?” But that’s the point of the story.
It’s the same with Isaac. Even blind and dying, Isaac should not have been fooled. After all, at least one of his senses—sound—tells him flat out this is not Esau. Something else, his gut perhaps—tells him Esau has not been gone long enough hunting. He has come back too soon. Something is not right. But, like the wolf, Jacob has an answer to each of Isaac’s questions.
Last week, I suggested the story of Abraham nearly killing Isaac
is not a story of blind obedience to God but might instead be a lesson on
discernment that Abraham fails. God
would never ask a parent to kill their child.
And this week’s story of how Rebekah and Jacob fool Isaac is also a story about discernment. Isaac knows something is off in the story he is being told that Esau returned early from the hunt, that his voice sounds suspiciously like Jacob’s. But Isaac is basically told he cannot trust what he hears. He cannot trust this stirring inside of him that questions what he’s being told.
And Isaac, blind and weary and tired and close to death, perhaps doesn’t have the internal strength, the cognitive energy, to fight the story Rebekah and Jacob have written for him.
Also last week, I pointed out that in the book of Genesis, post-Eden, God still talks directly to people and yet they still mess up. What hope to do we have in discerning God’s will in this day when all of our senses are bombarded with AI deepfakes and algorithms that flood our online life with advertisements for things we didn’t even know we wanted but now feel like we absolutely need.
We are left like Isaac, blind to the world and without enough faith in our gut to stand up and fight back against the lies and manipulations we are being told.
I’ve used that word “gut” a couple of times now. Trusting our gut. My mom used to refer to those gut feelings as “uh oh” feelings, meaning you know something is not quite right, perhaps even dangerous—but you can’t pinpoint what exactly is making you feel that way.
I would argue those gut feelings, those “uh oh” feelings are the prodding of the Holy Spirit inside of you, saying, “Hey, let’s step back a moment and think about this.”
When you think about it that way, you suddenly realize that it’s possible you have been trying to silence the Holy Spirit a lot.
So, what do we do? How do we listen for that still, small voice? How do we separate God’s voice from all the mimics?
It starts with intentionality. It starts with daily prayer. It starts with spiritual exercise that you take seriously, not New Year’s resolutions that we abandon by the end of January, but with daily, sustained conversation with God.
It starts with making the effort to identify where God is in your life and what He trying to tell you.
I mentioned that last Friday, I ignored my senses—I could see the snow was bad—and I ignored my gut—after sliding through the intersection, I should have just parked somewhere and waited it out. That was a failure of listening to God.
But then Saturday came. It was frigid outside but the sky was just as blue as anything you could imagine. The sky was saturated in blue, dripping with blue, or maybe I was just hearing the sound of the melting snow cascading down my roof and then pouring, a steady stream, down the gutter spout.
But there was another noise that day. It was birdsong. Even in Cincinnati there are birds that don’t fly south for the winter, but what I noticed the other day was that those birds had been silent and now it was as if something had woken them up, because they were clearly singing, in particular the House Finch and the cardinal.
They were singing as if it were spring even though snow still blanketed the ground and icicles as thick as my waist still hung from the eaves of the church across the street.
The snow and the cold air may have screamed winter, but the birds discerned something else entirely. The days were longer and the sun seemed brighter.
Spring is coming and so the birds sing.
As for me, I sat curled up under a heavy blanket in my recliner and despite what I saw and what I felt, when I heard the birds singing, I too discerned that spring was coming.
No offense to the forecasting abilities of a certain ground hog, but I expect to see the crocus soon and not sometime in mid-March.
Notice that when I made the wrong decision on Friday to keep driving, that not only did I ignore my senses and my gut, but that the decision was partly based on fear. I wanted to get home. I was afraid if I stopped in a parking lot somewhere, I might get snowed in, so fear drove my decision to keep going.
But the next day, my discerning of spring came from a different place. I listened to birdsong. I felt the sun. My prediction that spring was on its way was made from a place of hope and peace and steadiness.
This is how we discern God’s presence in our lives. God does not amplify our fear. He knows that we are afraid—we’re only human—but He asks that we trust Him in those times.
We make such better decisions when we act from a place of hope and love than when we act from fear.
Choose love or choose fear.
Only one can bring us peace.
So begin here—love God, love your neighbor, unconditionally and without exception.
Listen to the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
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