Esau Had Kids...Lots of Them.

So today I read in the Bible about the descendants of Esau.  Esau had lots of wives and children and they settled a great distance away from Esau's twin brother Jacob, because the land couldn't support all the livestock they had acquired.  Esau's children had strange names.  I think the weirdest name of the bunch was that of one of Esau's multiple wives who was named Oholibama.  I wonder what happened when Esau called her for anything.  Maybe he just shortened the name to Oho.  I hope so.

Sometimes when you read the Bible, you are left to scratch your head and wonder.  The thing that I take out of the reading today is that Isaac's blessing over a heartbroken Esau came to be, and Esau became a nation in his own right.  God keeps his promises.  But that was a lot of reading of weird names for such a very basic lesson.  One of Esau's grandchildren did discover a hot spring.  That's his claim to fame.

Other important news of the day...the folks at church prayed for me to be healed.  It is still difficult for me to allow that.  When people pray to God for healing for me I still feel afraid; afraid that I will be disappointed, afraid that the people praying will be disappointed, afraid of not being able to show my disappointment.  But they prayed.  It was sweet and it was kind.  And I got the feeling that I should not be afraid.  But I am...even when among friends and family.

Healing is a hard topic to think about because it's measurable.  If I pray for someone to feel the love of God, well there's no way to measure whether or not that prayer was answered.  But when you pray for healing, it either happens or it doesn't.  When healing doesn't happen it creates a crisis of faith.  And I think that crisis is what I hate.  I don't like facing defeat or failure.  I hate even more trying to explain away what God may or may not have done.  I wish healing were easy, and I wish waiting for it weren't so frustrating.  I wish there were a way to grab Jesus' robe.  I wish that being crippled weren't such an obvious thing.  I wish my fight with unbelief wasn't public.  But it is quite public, and I must get used to that.

I guess for now I will remember that God keeps his promises.  And I hope that someday I'll get to see it happen.  If not, my job is to keep believing even though healing seems far off.