God is a witness between you and me. (Gen. 31:50)
The Notre Dame football team had soundly beaten the USC team, 51–0. The losing USC coach walked into a locker room full of dejected and despairing players hanging their heads. He stood up in the middle of them and said, “Let’s put this into perspective, team. There are a billion Chinese people who don’t even know this game was played!”
A different perspective can change the way we see things. Genesis 31 is a very different story, depending on whose perspective you view it from. From Laban’s perspective, Jacob was the deceiving, suspiciously successful son-in-law, who not only snuck away in the night with his daughters and grandchildren, but also stole some of his prized possessions. From Jacob’s perspective, Laban was the demanding, exacting, and betraying father-in-law he could never please who had tricked him into marrying his oldest daughter, changed his wages several times, and chased him across the desert to hunt him down, kill him, and take his daughters back.
That is why it is so important to reconcile with even our enemies. These painful relationships seem to us like simple hero and villain stories, where one party is clearly right and the other one is clearly wrong. But even Jacob and Laban, enemies at the start of the story, reconciled with each other and made things right. Have you?
See things from God’s perspective and make broken relationships right.
David Drury is a multivocational second-chair leader, org founder, church planter, author, researcher for author Max Lucado, and previous chief of staff for The Wesleyan Church headquarters.
© 2021 Wesleyan Publishing House. Reprinted from Light from the Word. Used by permission. Scriptures taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
