An Odd and Uncomfortable Blend

Esau went to Ishmael and took Mahalath daughter of Abraham's son Ishmael, and sister of Nebaioth, to be his wife in addition to the wives he had. -Genesis 28:9

I am stunned by the amount of new information and new connections I am getting from this new reading of Genesis; a book I have read many times. It seems we are connecting families again.  Esau knew that he had displeased his parents by marrying two Hittite women. Apparently the Hittite women were vain, impious, and idolators and adulteresses. To please his parents he married Ishmael's daughter, Mahalath. 

This marriage was a marriage of repentance on Esau's part.  He perhaps was still looking for "the" blessing that Jacob received.  He hoped to please his parents AND God with this marriage, but he still kept his Hittite wives.

That is so like we humans.  We sin and sin again. We confess and try to do good with our lives, and often succeed, but we don't let go of the sin. We confess, but we don't repent. Somehow we think our good works make up for our lack of repentance.

Yes, God still loves us! The repentance is for us, not Him. Our lives on this earth are hopefully spent in constant renewal... daily baptism. It's so hard to continue to move forward when there is sin that we have recognized in our life but refuse to give up.

What an odd blend of wives that was for Esau and how uncomfortable it must have been at the family dinner table; maybe not for the Hittites, because in their shallowness they probably did not notice, but for Esau's new wife and the rest of the family.  Is it not an equally odd and uncomfortable blend to let our good works and sin live together as if it were natural?

We are never going to be without sin, but that glaringly odd and uncomfortable stuff really needs to be dealt with before we can truly move on and grow and renew.

God of Our Baptism,

Help us to weed out the vain, impious, idolating sin in our lives that we may grow in our walk with you. Amen.