Mahatma
Gandhi is famous for saying “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with
their dirty feet.” He was not a man that was going to be moved away from the principles on which he based his life. I
love the story of Gandhi arriving for a meeting with the King of England and
the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. When he was asked if he was planning on dressing up in a suit and tie for
the occasion, Gandhi is reported to have replied that the King and the Prime
Minister would wear enough suits to make up for his lack. He would dress as who
he was; a simple man of the people and proud of his position and his country. Dress
never makes a man; only the principles to which we hold fast has the power to
do that.
While Jacob had gone back to find a wife among people who
believed similarly to his upbringing and beliefs, just as his father had and
desired that his sons would, increasingly we see the children of Jacob marrying
the local woman in the area where dad had settled.
And on its own, there is nothing wrong with that. The problem arose when these
women began to lure the sons of Jacob away from God of Abraham and the God of
the Promise and toward the local gods of the Canaanite people. The children of Jacob consistently became corrupted by
the local women of Canaan who were devoted to false gods. This corruption
became a barrier to the plan that God had for Israel.
But just as consistently, God had a plan to bring
his people back to the plan that he had for them, and it involved removing them
from the land that had been promised to
them through Abraham. God had no intention of allowing his children to be corrupted; no intention in allowing the gods
of these local women to walk through the minds of his people with their dirty
feet.
I have openly wondered why
Abraham, and the descendants of Abraham, would leave the land that God had
promised to them. I still wonder about Abraham, but as far as his children are
concerned, the answer to the question is that God was removing them from the
land to clean off the dirty feet marks these false gods had made on their
lives. In Egypt, the children of Jacob would be despised and isolated, and the
corruption that was started through their
marriages could be cleaned and healed. Four hundred years later, the land would
welcome them back. Centuries later, corruption would once again necessitate
their removal. But once again the land would welcome them back.
Four decades after the
ministry of Jesus, the people would once again be
removed. And it would be almost 1900 years before the land welcomed them
back once more. But each time, the removal of Israel from the Promised Land
gave them the opportunity to be brought back into an essential worship of the God who laid special claim on their
lives – and cleaning the footprints off of their lives that had been left there by corrupt,
dirty feet.
Tomorrow’s Scripture
Reading: Genesis 39
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