Sundays 2nd and 9th August, 9th and 10th Sundays after Trinity

If you follow the continuous track of the Lectionary (and if you don’t where have you been? Don’t know what that is? Ask the curate to explain, she’d love to…) you’ll know that we are currently following the story of Jacob and his family at the end of Genesis. We all know that families can be – well, complicated – but Jacob’s family had complication in spades. Fraud, jealousy, feuds, favourite child syndrome, bullying, attempted murder, slavery. But also a lot of love, forgiveness, reconciliation, faithfulness and learning from mistakes. Put simply, Jacob’s family life is like the family life many of us experience – messy.

But Jacob is the son of Isaac, and the grandson of Abraham. Jacob carries the promise of God that through Abraham’s heirs all the nations of the earth will be blessed. And we, gathering in this ancient place of prayer and worship, are the inheritors of that promise.

God mostly doesn’t work through perfect people. He works through messy, flawed, complicated people with messy, flawed, complicated relationships. Jacob carried the promise of God and through him grace came to us. And we too bear the same promise. What might our descendants learn of God and his grace from our stories?

Every blessing,

Roger