22/05/2024
Chapter:- 2
JACOB'S RESPONSE
"And Jacob said unto pharaoh,
the days of the years of my pilgrimage are hundred and thirty years:few and evil have the days of the years of my life been and have not attained unto the days of the years of the life of my father's in the days of their pilgrimage"GENESIS 47:9
There are many lessons to learn in the response of Jacob to pharaoh. Jacob did not just say "I am 130 years old"but he revealed his age in the context of the fact that life is a journey.
We are on a pilgrimage on earth, obviously when man visits another country outside his,he is said to be visiting - a tourist,a pilgrim. Without any doubt,no matter how long he is privilege to stay in that country,if he is not given a resident permit or become a citizen of that country, having satisfied the constitutional requirement of that nation,he remains a visitor. He is expected to go back to his home country one day.
Jacob confirmed that he has been on a pilgrimage for one hundred and thirty years. He captioned the years of his journey on earth with few explanations. He said "few in the sense that no matter how old you are,to the Ancient of days; the Almighty God,they are few days.
You will see from the response of Jacob that he was not speaking in terms of years,but days.
"Teach us to number our days ,
so that we may apply our heart to wisdom"Psalm 90:12
May I advice you at this point to carry out a little arithmetic by converting your age in years to days,for example at 50 years ,one has spent 18,250 days(365days *50). When I added the leap years in my own case, it comes to 18,263days. Wahoo ,18,263 days on earth?
You may want to go further in your arithmetic. We all know that 24hrs make a day ,so, let us multiply 18,263 days by 24hours. The answer is 438,312 hours, let us go further ; if we multiply it by 60minutes which makes an hour,then we will arrive at 26,298,720 that is twenty six million,two hundred and ninety eight thousand,seven hundred and twenty minutes.
The question is,how do you spend these minutes of your life or better still how do you spend every minute that is going to count from this moment.
" Teach us to number our days,so that we may apply our heart to wisdom".
Jacob was born into the family of a Man who had a covenant with God - Abraham. By the virtue of God's election,he was to key into this covenant and thereby enjoy the blessings that follows,but unfortunately at a point in his life ,he thought he was smart or fast ,he told lies about his identity,got the prayer of blessings that supposed to launch him into the covenant blessing from Isaac his father,but afterward he ran into self exile and for good twenty years in the house of Laban, he got all the goods and materials he could gather including wives and children and yet he was not blessed.
TO BE CONTINUE
