Day 10 – September 11, 2025: Genesis 33-36 and John 18-19

While there is much to be said about the Scripture that is before us, today, September 11, is an important day that should go noticed. It was on this day 24 years ago that a small group of men changed the world by their actions in airplanes that killed thousands of people. Our world has not recovered, our nations has not been the same since, and fear and anger have pervaded the lives of our culture in ways that they did not earlier. September 11 was the most pivotal moment in my life in regards to how we live our lives within our society and our culture. This has an impact on our faith, because our faith seems to make little headway against the tide of culture. My prayer in our time is that we would see ourselves as disciples of Jesus Christ first and then as people of this culture, this society, this nation, second.

Israel, aka Jacob, was building a nation and he didn’t even know it. He was about to come face to face with a brother that he had betrayed and who potentially was on the war path to take him out. But when they met the exact opposite happens. They embrace as if they were long lost brothers, and maybe because they were long lost brothers. Israel has a final son who is Benjamin and makes it all the way home to be present for when his father, Isaac, dies. We are squarely in the time of the patriarchs.

The Gospel presents us with a nation that is in control and is the only one who was able to enact capital punishment against a political prisoner, the son of a carpenter, a rabbi, a religious leader, a man named Jesus. We often forget that Jesus was crucified as a result of the ruling power feeling that they had to quash whatever he was selling by killing him just like they killed John the Baptist. Both Jesus and his cousin were killed by the nation, by the country’s rulers of that day. The burden on Mary and Elizabeth must have been heavy. That is the family where two members were killed by Rome because of their rebel rousing.