Tag: Lot

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Genesis

At what cost?

Genesis

Last night, I chatted with a student, and he talked about how he loves fishing.

His family lives in Mie Prefecture, but he lives in Osaka prefecture most of the week because of his job. He apparently goes back to visit his family every weekend… sort of.

Instead of spending time with his family, he usually goes out fishing.

He told me with a big smile on his face, “My wife always complains when I go out fishing and says I should spend more time with my daughters (8 and 10 years old respectively).”

As an English teacher, and especially meeting him for the first time, I couldn’t really say anything, but in my head, I was thinking, “You may enjoy fishing, but at what cost?”

He never sees his kids during the week nor his wife. And when he does come home, he never spends much time with them. The day will come when he finds that he has totally alienated his family… if that day hasn’t come already.

All of us make decisions in life. Sometimes we even make them thinking they’re for the best. But the question we need to constantly ask ourselves is, “At what cost am I doing these things?”

Lot’s daughters were desperate to preserve their family line. Their husbands had been killed when Sodom was destroyed. Their father had taken them away to the mountains, and they were basically living as hermits there, cut off from civilization.

And so they got their father drunk and slept with him. They preserved their family line, but at what cost? They degraded themselves and their father.

I wonder how Lot felt when he found out. He had made his own mistakes. At this point, he had nothing. There was no reason he couldn’t have gone back to Abraham. Abraham would’ve taken him in. But perhaps Lot was too ashamed at what had happened to him.

So he kept his pride and stayed away. But at what cost? What pride he had left was stripped away by his daughter’s actions.

But the amazing thing is that even from the depths that we find ourselves in because of the bad choices we make, God can still find a way to redeem the situation.

One of Lot’s daughters gave birth to a son named Moab.

Years later, from that family line came a woman called Ruth, who traveled with her mother-in-law Naomi to the land of Israel.

Ruth married a man named Boaz, and if you look far enough down that family line, you find the name of the ultimate Redeemer: Jesus.

Lot and his daughters made awful decisions. And yet God was still able to find a way to turn their situation into something that had worth.

He can do the same with us.

Maybe you married a non-Christian, and now you’re facing marital problems because of it.

Maybe you neglected your family, and now your wife is leaving you.

Maybe you walked away from God to pursue your career, and now your life feels empty, and you feel that God has abandoned you.

Whatever mess you’ve made of your life, God will not abandon you. He will not give up on you. And he can turn the most horrible situation into something beautiful.

All you need to do is turn to him. Admit that you’ve made bad decisions. Ask for forgiveness. Ask for his help. And God will be there for you.

It doesn’t mean that God will necessarily take away your problems. But he will see you through them.

As it says in James 4:10,

Humble yourselves before the Lord, and he will lift you up.

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Genesis

Holding on to what you shouldn’t

Genesis

Several years ago, I was working at an English conversation school called NOVA. It was one of the largest schools in Japan, and I had worked there for seven years or so.

In my last several years I noticed some disturbing trends. One was that they were expanding far more rapidly than it seemed they should. Then in my final year, schools started closing, and if that weren’t enough, paychecks started coming in late.

I should’ve gotten out at that point, but it was hard because the pay was pretty good, I had good benefits, the hours were great, and I just kept hoping against hope that things would get better. It didn’t and the company went bankrupt.

Suddenly, I along with hundreds of other teachers and staff were out of a job. And because the market was so suddenly flooded with teachers, it became very difficult to find another job.

I’ve got an okay job now, but I keep wondering if I could be doing better if I had gotten out of NOVA earlier before the market flooded. Maybe. Maybe not. I’ll never know.

Lot was in a similar situation. He had parted ways from Abraham after a dispute over land, and Lot had chosen a place that looked really good to the eye.

It seems like he also became one of the leaders of the city in a very short time (city leaders often sat at the city gates in order to judge disputes that might have occurred).

So not only was he in a comfortable place, but he was also in a comfortable position in the city.

There was one problem. Sodom was extremely wicked. Perhaps Lot had tried to be a good example to the city from his position of influence. But ultimately, Sodom got worse and worse.

Peter described Lot this way:

a righteous man, who was distressed by the depraved conduct of the lawless (for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard). (2 Peter 2:7–8)

But there was another problem. The people of Sodom were starting to affect the way that Lot thought. Instead of influencing them, they were influencing him.

You see that clearly when the people started to attack his house, insisting that he send the angels out to them so that the people could rape them. What did Lot do? He offered to send out his daughters to them instead.

That’s the problem when you surround yourself with ungodly people with no one around you to remind you of God and his ways. You often start to take on the values and attitudes of the people you actually spend time with.

Lot should have gotten out of there a long time ago. Why didn’t he? He was probably comfortable where he was. He probably enjoyed his place in the community. And he didn’t want to give these things up.

So he continued hoping against hope that things would get better. And it almost led to disaster for him and his family.

Even when the angels warned him of the judgment to come, he hesitated. The angels literally had to drag him and his family out of the city. Even then, he was hesitant to completely leave the area.

How often do we hold on to things that are not good for us? It could be a job that takes us away from our family or from church on Sundays. It could be a relationship with a boyfriend or girlfriend that is not a Christian.

It could be pornography. It could even be something that’s “good” but that pulls us away from God. It could be a hobby that dominates too much of your time. It could be the internet, books, TV, or sports.

None of them are bad in themselves, but they can become bad if they start to control us instead of us controlling them.

I know for me, that has been a problem in the past, and I still struggle with it even today.

What about you? What are you holding on to today?

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Genesis

Not worth arguing about

Genesis

Every once in a while, my wife and I will have a disagreement. Generally speaking, they tend to be small things, but our conversation can get heated at times.

It’s very strange to me how stubborn I can get (dare I say my wife as well) about things sometimes. And I often find myself fighting pride, not wanting to give in to her.

Just as an example, on our baby stroller, there are some straps with hooks on them that will naturally just slide down the sides of the stroller handle if you don’t make a conscious effort to hold them where they are.

(When there’s no bag or something on them holding them together, anyway).

One time, my wife got really annoyed with me because I let the straps go down yet again and left them there until she used the stroller the next day. (In my defense, she’d never mentioned it before).

From my standpoint, it was a very small thing. So it falls down. It takes all of 2 seconds to push them back up again. Who cares? Apparently, my wife did.

Still, my thinking was, “If it takes two seconds, and she really cares about it, she should just push it up.”

It took God’s little voice saying, “If it takes two seconds, why don’t you just push them back up before you put the stroller away,” to get me to stop the argument and to start changing my habits.

Yep, pride can be a pretty nasty thing in these kinds of arguments.

Abram’s dispute with Lot was much bigger. The land couldn’t support the two of them, and it was causing a huge problem between their men.

Abram had every right as the leader in the family to say, “Get lost Lot. I get first pick of the land, and I’m going this way.”

There could’ve been a big dispute over the land, but instead, Abram said, “Hey, we’re close relatives. This isn’t worth arguing about. There’s a lot of land. You choose where you want to go, and I’ll go the other way.”

And when Lot chose what looked to be the better land, Abram didn’t argue; he just said, “God bless” and left. And what’s more, God blessed him for it.

How much better would life be if when we’re arguing about something, we say, “Look we’re friends. You’re my husband. You’re my wife. Our relationship is much more important than our dispute. So I’ll bend on this because I love you.”

How much better would our lives be if we could just let pride go, and as the apostle Paul said:

Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ. (Ephesians 5:21)

How much of the Lord’s blessing would we find in our relationships, if we would learn to do that?