October 9 | Genesis 49, 50
PRAYER PRACTICE
Spoken Prayer – Out loud, pray for God to speak to you through your reading. Praise God for giving us His Word. Ask the Spirit to help you read with faith, and to live out what you hear from God through the passage.
DAILY READING:
Genesis 49:29-33, 50:1-6
For more help use this Bible Study method
REFLECTION
Gathered to My People
by Mary Alice McGinnis
In today’s reading, Jacob (Israel), has just finished blessing and giving his final words to his 12 sons. As Jacob lies on his deathbed, he says, “I am about to be gathered to my people.” He then makes Joseph promise to bury him with his grandfather, Abraham, his father, Isaac, and his wife Leah. They were his people. When Jacob dies, it says he “breathed his last and was gathered to his people.”
During this time of the Pandemic, many of us feel disconnected and alone. As I am writing this devotion, I am preparing to have some long-awaited overdue time with my sisters. We have not seen each other face to face in quite some time. I cannot wait to see their faces, hug them, catch up, share some laughs, tell stories, and just share some special time together. In today’s vernacular, they are “my peeps.” Even though we have vastly different lives, we are family, we share a history and a sense of belonging that time and distance cannot diminish. Being together feels like coming home. In Jacob’s case, he was dying. Yet he looked forward to being “gathered to his people.” In a debate with the religious leaders of His day who denied the resurrection of the dead, Jesus pointed to the death of Jacob for a reminder.
Jesus says, “. . . have you not read what God said to you, 'I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob'? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Matthew 22:32
Jacob, who was of the lineage of the children of promise (children of Israel), knew something. He knew that even though he was dying in a foreign country (Egypt), he was not a citizen there. He did not belong there. Death was a reality, but he knew a BIGGER