Sweet sweet irony – Genesis 29

This week many things have happened, I had a wee maths test, which I’ll get results for tomorrow, I’ve rediscovered the wonders of Spotify, and played a fair bit of HoN – mostly winning, which is always nice.

The last two weeks at my Christian Unions “Small groups” (of which I attend one) have been pretty interesting, we’ve been looking at the Psalms and talking about turning to God in times of stress, fear and trouble! It’s been really encouraging, and certainly challenging at some points, where we’ve discussed what sort of things should we be putting into our heads? For example, is it appropriate to be listening to music all about guys grinding up to girls in clubs etc? It’s not wrong to do that, in any way, just perhaps there are better things to be listening to. I’m not saying that I won’t and don’t listen to that sort of music, because some of it is actually all-right! I/we where rather getting at the point that what you listen to affects how you think, and what you think affects everything you do. So maybe it’s not helpful to be filling your subconsciousness with the that “jazz” (music pun there, you have to love that).

Since my blog is titled “Sweet sweet irony” I’ve been searching for some ironic examples from my life…

The closest I come to ironic is probably thinking “It won’t rain today” hence dressing in shorts and teeshirt (although I did take a hooded jumped out with me) and then getting hit by a massive cloud burst.

Lacking more interesting examples, I’m leaping to the internet for a series of “ironic quotes”

Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum (I think that I think, therefore I think that I am.) – Ambrose Bierce

Health consists of having the same diseases as one’s neighbors. –Quentin Crisp

We spend the first twelve months of our children’s lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next twelve telling them to sit down and shut up.  – Phyllis Diller

That’ll about do it.

Lets get into the passage, and find out why it’s ironic.

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Genesis%2029&version=NCV

Jacob makes his way to his relative Labon’s house, it’s a bit of a journey, but he makes it safely. He tells Laban everything, and after a month of working there Laban realises he is exploiting his own family, which isn’t very fair. So he says to him, how can I pay you? Jacob barters highly, saying I’ll work for you 7 years, if you let me marry your daughter Rachel.

Laban sees the advantages of this, he gets a motivated worker for 7 years, and his younger daughter gets married, whats to loose? Especially as he isn’t one of the nasty heathens.

Everything is looking pretty sweet for Jacob, in 7 years time he’ll be married to the love of his life, sweet right?

Well the years pass like days for Jacob, so set of marrying Rachel is he. After the 7 years, he calls up Laban to fulfil his side of the bargain. However, Laban, the sly dog that he is, dresses up Leah, Rachel’s older and “weak eyed” sister. The whole   veil thingy doesn’t work well for Jacob here. Tricked, he has a wee word with Laban who says “well it’s a cultural thing, finish the wedding celebration and you can marry Rachel next week – if you work another 7 years for me”

Jacob is clearly biased towards Rachel, and God seeing this, knows that just isn’t fair, so to even things up a bit, He makes Leah capable of having children, and not Rachel.

The ironic bit would be that the trickster got tricked. As internally satisfying that is for the reader, I’m sure Jacob was beyond raging, he could have gone on a killing spree of biblical proportions (see what I did there). However, he does not. He controls himself, he “simmers doon” and when he confronts Laban about it, he managed not to rip the guys head off.

This is the kind of self-discipline that it is important for people to show in their lives. When it comes to most things in life, if you can discipline yourself to work at it – School, Uni, your job breaking bad habits and making good habits then you can do it. However, it’s that self-discipline you need to master them.

I have very poor self-discipline. I find it hard to settle down and get to work, when I know how many games I could play or people I could talk to, if I didn’t have to go over my uni notes, things like that. I’ve been working on it though, and I think I’m really improving, I attend the majority of my classes regularly, and  actually do work outside of classes.

I think the key thing to self-discipline is planning though. For example, when I know I have to work, I shut down facebook, so it doesn’t distract me, same with Skype and Steam (a games program) and just buckle down. If you don’t put yourself in a position where it’s easy to mess up, it obviously makes it harder to mess up.

Referencing my small group again, we talked about Psalm 18 last night, at one point it says this;

Psalm 18

³⁵ You protect me with your saving shield. 
       You support me with your right hand. 
       You have stooped to make me great.
 ³⁶ You give me a better way to live, 
       so I live as you want me to.

David says this while he is being hunted down by the king of the time, Saul. If David relies on God to help him with a king and his army, then surely God can help us to beat the “twin-demons of distraction and procrastination?” (NB. that was some form of exaggeration, I don’t believe there are actually demons called distraction and procrastination, those would be ridiculous names ;]  )

Thanks for reading, remember Life doesn’t need to be a mystery. Life is God.