ItR17;s easy to hunker down when life gets complicated. WeR17;ll just manage whatR17;s in front of us and quietly wonder whether GodR17;s bigger plan still has a place for us in it. Genesis 24 takes us to the story of a family facing down that same question.
God told Rebekah before her sons were born that the older would serve the younger—yet in Genesis 25, Isaac loves Esau most. Nothing looks like itR17;s heading where God said it would. When the path to GodR17;s promises feels unnecessarily tangled, can we still believe heR17;s working?
We all arrive at Advent carrying something broken—a diagnosis, a fraying relationship, a season that feels anything but joyful—and our instinct is right: we want God to fix it. In John 6, the crowd feels exactly that after watching Jesus feed five thousand people, so they move to do something about it. The question the passage presses on us is whether we actually understand what problem he came to fix.
God calls us to self-control and endurance. What does that look like? How do we do it? Pastor Tim considers that with an exploration of our continue struggles with these things from the very beginning.
Little sins that seem almost harmless still multiply until they leave us too blind even for grace. In Genesis 4, CainR17;s story is one of just such little sins and it serves as a caution as we tend our own “harmless sins.̶1;
When somethingR17;s keeping you up at night—an unexpected bill, a looming deadline, a need you canR17;t see your way through—itR17;s easy to wonder whether those worries are too ordinary to bring to God. Jesus is clear in the next part of the LordR17;s Prayer that simply isnR17;t the case.
We think we have everything under control and know how to anticipate our weaknesses, yet sin still sneaks up looking attractive and attacks when least expected. In Genesis 3 a crafty serpent made the forbidden tree seem good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable for wisdom.
WeR17;ve all felt stuck in the middle—watching God work powerfully somewhere else while wondering if HeR17;s forgotten us. In Genesis 21 the long-promised son finally arrives and the house fills with laughter, yet Isaac almost vanishes into the background of his own story. Even there, something unseen is still moving.
We instinctively read our circumstances as a verdict on where we stand with God—ease means favor, famine means failure. In Genesis 26, Isaac is stranded in exactly that famine, holding a promise that the land and its people seem to be disproving, and GodR17;s answer to him isnR17;t immediate relief but something harder to trust.
Once the Christmas packages are cleared away, the dark sections of life can become painfully visible again—and we may have no idea how to fix them. Revelation 22 meets that helplessness with a river of life, a tree for the healing of the nations, and a coming day when night will be no more.