IT'S HARD TO GO BACK (8 OF 8)
by Roger Thomas
Scripture: GENESIS 32:22-32
This content is part of a series.
It's Hard to Go Back (8 of 8)
Series: The Beginnings
Roger Thomas
Genesis 32:22-32
Sometimes it's hard to go home. It was for Jacob. Jacob was headed home for the first time in twenty years. Twenty years is a long time. A lot can change. On the other hand, sometimes things might not have changed. That too can make it hard.
Going home means going back--old memories, old mistakes, old reputations. Sometimes people change while their gone. But the people back home don't always know that. Back home, you're still the same ornery little kid as before. To the neighbor ladies, you're still that freckle-faced little boy with the cow-lick or the chubby little girl with braces. Maybe they only remember the obnoxious teenager who was forever getting in trouble. When you go home, you have to listen to all of those embarrassing stories over and over again.
For Jacob it was worse than that. He had made some mistakes. He had disappointed his dad. His brother hated him. Nobody liked him much. Jacob had left home to get away from all of that. Going away and starting over someplace else had seemed a lot easier than dealing with the mess he had made of his life.
I am reminded of the mother that Jerry Clower used tell about. One day some workman started re-roofing a large building not far from her house. A couple days later the youngest of her sixteen children wandered off. She looked and looked and finally found him. He had fallen in a fifty gallon vat of roofing tar. She reached in and pulled him out. As she drug him home by his shirt collar, she was overheard saying, "Boy, it would be a lot easier to have another child than to clean you up!"
For Jacob it had all started the day he was born, actually before. He was the youngest of twin boys. Everybody always reminded him how he and Esau used to fight all the time. Even before they were born, Rebekah said she could feel them wrestling with one another. When Jacob was born, he came o ...
Series: The Beginnings
Roger Thomas
Genesis 32:22-32
Sometimes it's hard to go home. It was for Jacob. Jacob was headed home for the first time in twenty years. Twenty years is a long time. A lot can change. On the other hand, sometimes things might not have changed. That too can make it hard.
Going home means going back--old memories, old mistakes, old reputations. Sometimes people change while their gone. But the people back home don't always know that. Back home, you're still the same ornery little kid as before. To the neighbor ladies, you're still that freckle-faced little boy with the cow-lick or the chubby little girl with braces. Maybe they only remember the obnoxious teenager who was forever getting in trouble. When you go home, you have to listen to all of those embarrassing stories over and over again.
For Jacob it was worse than that. He had made some mistakes. He had disappointed his dad. His brother hated him. Nobody liked him much. Jacob had left home to get away from all of that. Going away and starting over someplace else had seemed a lot easier than dealing with the mess he had made of his life.
I am reminded of the mother that Jerry Clower used tell about. One day some workman started re-roofing a large building not far from her house. A couple days later the youngest of her sixteen children wandered off. She looked and looked and finally found him. He had fallen in a fifty gallon vat of roofing tar. She reached in and pulled him out. As she drug him home by his shirt collar, she was overheard saying, "Boy, it would be a lot easier to have another child than to clean you up!"
For Jacob it had all started the day he was born, actually before. He was the youngest of twin boys. Everybody always reminded him how he and Esau used to fight all the time. Even before they were born, Rebekah said she could feel them wrestling with one another. When Jacob was born, he came o ...
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