Changing of the Names

Scripture: Once when Jacob was cooking a stew, Esau came in from the field exhausted. He said to Jacob, “Let me eat some of that red stuff, because I’m exhausted.” That is why he was also named Edom. Genesis 25:29-30

Observation: Esau sells his financial inheritance for a bowl of lentil stew. It is an act that is nonsensical and impulsive. However, this act also introduces the name Edom into scriptures. This is the name of the nation that will come from Esau, Edom, or the Edomites, who will settle in modern day Jordan. These are the ancient people who will use caves to carve great villages into rock cliffs that are still a marvel today. They are also a people who will despise Israel despite their common faith, and eventually be cursed to destruction explicitly because of how they celebrate Israel's downfall.

As it turns out, both Jacob and Esau will be renamed. Jacob will be called Israel, one who wrestles with God, as a reflection of his strong will and resistance to the will and direction of Yahweh, culminating with a moment where he literally fights with the Lord. Esau will be called Edom, meaning 'red', and it is a word that echos back to the moment where Esau acted so impetuously and contemptuously that he set himself down a path of subservience to his brother.

Application: I wonder what my name would be if it were to be some defining attribute of mine, manifested in a specific action that occurred in my 20s or 30s? I feel it would have something to do with 'directionless' or 'professionless'. In my professional life, I have never really had a plan or a specific knowledge set that would be called a profession. This led me to eventually get contract work with a government to help them create a strategy for integrating criminal justice data ... there isn't one single word in that sentence that relates to anything I had ever done in my life before then.

I pray often for God to guide me on his path. However, I have to admin that ... I sure haven't been intentionally walking my own path. Maybe I sometimes end up on 'this' path - whatever seems like the direction I'm going, I insistently to a fault keep going that way - but that doesn't mean I have direction.

So how will my directionless wandering affect my family? Is that a legacy they'll inherit? I see it some in my children. Though they both have defined ideas about what they want to do, and intentional skills developed to do it, my son can also just go with the flow of his current situation, sometimes to a fault. That feels familiar to me.

Prayer: Abba, my daddy, it is comforting to realize that I do not have my own direction, because that alone should liberate me to follow your path for my life. I do not wish to cling to some random direction in my life, but I also am content wandering when you are the one taking me on the journey. May thy will be done. Amen.