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LOVE SEES GOD IN PEOPLE

Can you see God’s face in the face of your brother or sister? Not without a heart that has been transformed by God’s love.

These words are stunning. Not only because it is so unusual for anyone to experience this and say it to someone else. But because it is what Jacob said to Esau…

• after Esau swore to kill Jacob for deceitfully stealing Isaac’s blessing of the firstborn, and Jacob fled for his life to another country for 14 years!
• while he and his young, large family with servants and cattle were traveling back to see his parents again!
• when Jacob saw Esau coming to him with 400 men!
• right after waking up from a night filled with wrestling with the Angel of God!

But there is the key. Jesus, in His Old Testament incarnation as “the Angel of God,” came to wrestle with Jacob, and Jacob engaged Him in the match that lasted until daybreak. God won and Jacob named the place, “the Face of God, because I saw God face to face and lived.”

This extreme reconciliation with its striking words seems inexplicable. We don’t know how it happened. But somehow Jacob saw the face of that same God in his brother. God must have been working with Esau too, to respond the way he did, but Jacob had no way of knowing that.

Jacob insisted on giving an enormous blessing to his brother, from whom he had stolen the blessing a decade and a half earlier, and honored him as the first-born son by bowing and calling him, “Lord.” Years later they were still at peace when they buried their father Isaac. Sometime after that Esau voluntarily moved his family and cattle business to Edom so Jacob could have the land of Canaan promised to Abraham and Isaac.

Prayer:

Open my eyes to see Your face, Jesus, so I can see Your face in the faces of people around me, and show them the grace and generosity of Your face in mine. Amen.

By: Pastor Steve Kobernik