When a mess lands in our lap—whether it’s the fallen world’s doing or our own—the natural move is to grab control and start fixing, doubling down on whatever we think will work. In Genesis 28, two sons of the same broken family face that same moment, and the difference between how they respond reaches right into the choices we face today.
Gaps make us uneasy, so we fill them by hook or by crook—inventing tidy origins for old phrases or forcing plans into place. Genesis 27 opens on Isaac’s household doing the same around the blessing he means to give, each scrambling to close what feels unfinished.
The Bible calls us to pray on all occasions and to constantly pray for God’s people (Ephesians 6:18). FaithTree Online Prayer Walks have each gathered hundreds of believers from around the world to pray before our faithful God. Let’s join together to pray in Jesus’s name once again at our eleventh Online Prayer Walk all day on January 30! We are excited to see what God will do through this time!
We think we're so strong until we're not—and Genesis 26 puts that uncomfortable truth right in front of us, as Isaac moves almost without pause from a mountaintop moment of God's renewed covenant promise straight into lying about his own wife out of fear.
Pastor Tim reflects on the end of our New City Catechism Sunday School Express series and what comes next as part of thinking about how God’s mercies are always new.
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 God's answer to him isn't immediate relief but something harder to trust.
