What is peace worth? Jacob tricked his twin brother out of everything. He had to run away from home to keep from being murdered by him. He worked in a foreign land 7 years for a wife he didn’t want, and another 7 for the wife he loved. His family was in strife his whole life. God blessed him and never abandoned him, but Jacob suffered and sacrificed, aching for peace and home. For me, suffering and sacrifice are part of being human, but the very act of reaching for God is the road home to peace.

 Then Jacob made a vow, saying, “If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat and clothing to wear, so that I come again to my father's house in peace, then the Lord shall be my God, and this stone, which I have set up for a pillar, shall be God's house. And of all that you give me I will give a full tenth to you.”

Genesis 28:20-22 - Bible Gateway link

Let them eat meat! Who knew? Humans ate only green plants until after the flood. Then God gave us food from “every moving thing that lives...” I promise, as you read through the Bible this year, you will discover wonderful things.

 And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. The fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every bird of the heavens, upon everything that creeps on the ground and all the fish of the sea. Into your hand they are delivered.

Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you. And as I gave you the green plants, I give you everything. But you shall not eat flesh with its life, that is, its blood.

Genesis 9:1-4 (ESV) Bible Gateway link

Since I was a child of divorce, and of my culture, I always thought the Adam and Eve story was fanciful and just a little sexist. Now, while enjoying my successful marriage, I’m open to the idea that my man is missing a rib. I try every day to be close enough to him to make us both whole.

Genesis 2:20-25 -  

The man gave names to all livestock and to the birds of the heavens and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper fit for him. So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Genesis 2:20-25 (ESV) Bible Gateway link