đ”Aesop’s Fables Month: The Dog and His Reflection đđȘ
Yesterday, we learned about God’s gracious gift of Sabbath rest and the fact that humans can be both grateful and discontented. I hope my readers were able, like I was, to see more blessings in Sabbath than you realized before reading the post. But human nature has another old, exhausting habit: even when God places genuine nourishment directly into our hands, our eyes tend to wander toward what someone else has that we don’t.
Aesop diagnosed this timeless spiritual blind spot thousands of years ago in one of his most recognized, convicting fables.
The Classic Fable Retold: The Dog and His Reflection (Perry 133)
A butcher had tossed a hound a choice, generous cut of meat. Thrilled with his good fortune, the dog clamped his jaws firmly around the prize and trotted toward home, eager to savor his feast undisturbed.
His path wound across a gentle country brook spanned by a low wooden footbridge. Halfway across, the water below rested in a calm, glassy pool, undisturbed by the slow current. Leaning over the edge, the dog caught sight of his own reflection in the mirrored surface.
Believing he was gazing at another hound carrying a cut of meat twice as large and juicy as his own, envy flared up within him. The feast in his mouth was no longer enough; he had to possess the other one too.
Snarling with greed, he snapped viciously at the image in the water. But the instant his jaws parted, the heavy meat slipped from his teeth and plunged into the pool. As concentric ripples broke across the surface, shattering the glassy image, the mirrored prize vanished completelyâand his real meal sank deep into the dark water, swept away out of reach.
He was left standing alone on the wooden planks, staring down at empty ripples with nothing in his mouth and nothing for his dinner.
The Mirage of the Magnified Portion
The tragedy of the fable isnât just that the dog lost his mealâitâs that he traded real substance for a watery mirage. Water naturally magnifies, refracts, and distorts. The reflection in the stream will always look larger and more tantalizing because imagination fills in whatever reality leaves out.
How often do we do the exact same thing with our callings, our blessings, and our daily bread? When we compare our behind-the-scenes lives to the polished surfaces of others, we are barking at reflections. And the moment we open our mouths in complaint or covetousness to grasp at what isn’t ours, we drop the peace and contentment God handed us for today.
The Apostle Paul reminded Timothy of the profound anchor that protects us from this trap:
âOf course, godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, so we cannot carry anything out of it. But if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these.â
1 Timothy 6:6-8 (B.S.B.)
Contentment is not a passive surrender to lack; it is the spiritual clarity to recognize that what God has placed in your hands right now is genuine, while the comparisons shouting from the cultural current are only fleeting shadows of illusion.
Resting in the Sufficient Provider
When the author of Hebrews challenged believers tempted by anxiety and accumulation, he tied true security directly to the constant presence of God:
âKeep your lives free from the love of money and be content with what you have, for God has said: âNever will I leave you, never will I forsake you.â So we say with confidence: âThe Lord is my helper; I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?ââ
Hebrews 13:5-6 (B.S.B)
The enemy of our souls loves to steal our peace and keep us leaning over the railing, dissatisfied with Godâs portion and agitated by what seems to belong to someone else. But our Shepherd invites us to walk across the bridge with heads held high, confident in His daily faithfulness.
Today, don’t let comparison rob you of your feast. Savor the daily manna God has given you, close your eyes to the distorted shadows of the world, and walk across the footbridge in full assurance that your Provider has already supplied all you need.
Here’s one more verse to focus on as you learn to trust in Yahveh Yireh (Jehovah Jireh) (The Lord will Provide):
âAnd my God will supply all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus. To our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen.â
Philippians 4:19-20 (B.S.B.)
And one of my favorite older hymns is He Was There All the Time because it compares the fruitless search with The Savior just waiting to give us everything we need. I couldn’t find a good one with lyrics, but this one by Vocal Union is beautiful…
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Ease on Down the Road
Looking down a red dirt road, CC image by Yeweny at Flickr (User no longer on Flickr)
It wasn’t that many months ago that I had to make a major move after nearly 19 years of living in the same place. Many years ago, and without nearly as much stuff, I remember thinking what so many of us think, I never want to go through this again. Moving is just plain difficult. Well, imagine what it would have been like way back in Old Testament Bible times when moving may not have meant moving as much stuff as we deal with now, but it did mean moving lots of people (family, servants, etc.), and lots of animals. Plus, it meant huge changes to cultures and traditions in the places you wanted to set up house. And many of those we read about had to move many times over. Today’s short reading from Genesis 26:13 through Genesis 26:22 tells of just such a situation.
From the end of yesterday’s reading and into the beginning of today’s reading, we are told that God blessed and prospered Isaac more and more until he became quite rich. And then we find out that the Philistines began to envy him. They went through the land and put dirt in all the wells his father Abraham dug while he was living. So Isaac, trying not to fight, dug new wells. The first one he dug, God revealed a natural spring, so the envious Philistines claimed it as their own.
Okay, to tell you the truth, I’m getting a bit miffed with these guys now. It doesn’t seem right that Isaac is just doing what is right in God’s eyes and receiving a just reward as a result, but these people seem bent on making his life miserable instead. I mean, why couldn’t they have befriended him and shared in his blessings? That seems like common sense to me, but unfortunately, common sense isn’t all that common, and I guess it never has been. And Isaac seemed to have a better attitude than I think most of us would these days. Instead of fighting, he just dug another well.
As we read on, we find that every time Isaac moved down the road and dug another well, these envious men started a fight over it and said it was their well. They didn’t want him to have what had already been dug (meaning they even buried their own blessings by filling in the wells), and then they fought over every new well he dug. At least as the well-digger, he had the right to name the wells, so he named them words that meant fighting and quarreling. Finally, though, he moved again, and this time he dug a well that no one fought over. He named it “Rehoboth” meaning room or wide open spaces and said, “Now the Lord has made room for us, and we will prosper.” The great attitude that Isaac had made me think of the title for this post which comes from the song of the same name. While I haven’t yet seen The Wiz, I have always liked the song. One line in it says, “Don’t you carry nothin’ that might be a load, come on and ease on down, ease on down the road.” I think Isaac did well at not carrying argument, resentment, or his own envy against these men who had set themselves up as his enemies.
One final thought: Maybe our land here in the United States was settled in a similar way. Men got tired of quarreling, so they set off for a new land where they could prosper. They still had to fight for it, whether fighting the original inhabitants, fighting those who wanted them back under their rule, or fighting the land and weather and illness. But they did make it a prosperous place, and they gave God praise for it. Now, we have envious people that want to “stop up our wells” and fight over what we claim through our original Constitution. Many have walked away and just gathered in states with like-minded folks who believe in the same history, but the envious have pushed to take over and take away our rights now in almost every part of our land. Sadly, we are probably going to have to fight another war within our own borders or ease on down the road and hope for another place to build a dream while the ungrateful destroy what our founding fathers built. But we must pray and ask God whether He wants us to fight or move. And when we get His answer, it might just be to wait because He has plans to ease us down the road into the New Heaven and New Earth where we will prosper and where we’ll never have to move again.
BTW, just to keep stepping stones on my daily word counts, my NaNo total for day #4 is 9487.
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Lives Without Love
When I read more about Leah today, from Genesis 30:14 through Genesis 30:27, I feel heartbroken for her. She has had four children, she has had two in proxy through her servant girl, but she still feels unloved. When her son collects some mandrakes from the field (thought to be translated from Hebrew meaning “love plant”), Rachael asks Leah if she can have some to help with her infertility. Leah gets upset and accuses Rachael of trying to steal her son as she has done with her husband. So Rachael makes a deal with Leah to exchange some of the fruit for Leah to have her husband back in her bed with her.
After all is said and done, Leah conceives and bares three more children, two boys and girl. She gives Jacob Isaachar (hired/reward), Zebulun (dwelling) and Dinah. When she named Zebulun, she said, “Maybe now that I have given him six children, my husband will live with me.” Finally, after Leah had her three new babies, Rachael finally conceived and gave birth to Joseph meaning “may He add” and hoping this was the end of her infertility and disgrace.
Both of these women had so much pain. Leah was unloved and lonely, and Rachael was infertile and felt rejected by God. But they were sisters. They could have loved each other and been there for each other through everything they went through. Leah could have cared for her sister’s infertility and invited her to help raise her nephews and nieces, but she was so bitter about the fact that her husband really wanted to be with her sister (and had actually married her in ceremony) that she did not care for her sister’s pain. I wonder if she had drawn closer to her sister, would she have felt less lonely? And I wonder if Rachael had cared more for her sister’s inability to change how their husband felt about her, and her inability to change the looks she was born with, would Leah have tried to spend more time with her. It seems that bitterness and envy made both of them lonelier and restricted both of them to lives without love of one kind or other–be it without a husband in the dwelling or without a child to raise.
Hebrews 12:15 talks about the root of bitterness and the torment that comes with it. I think feeling like you are living a life without any love in it would certainly fall under the definition of torment. But since the chapter ends with Jacob finishing his work for Laban and asking to return to his homeland with all his wives and children, maybe there is hope that once they all live together, the sisters can find love for each other again.
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November 12, 2013 Posted by Crystal A Murray (aka CrystalWriter) | Bible Study, Nonfiction, Torah Commentary | Adonai, Almighty, Bible, Bible Gateway, Bible reading, Bible study, bitterness, childbirth, children, Complete Jewish Bible, Creator, crystalwriter, Dinah, dwelling, envy, Genesis, Genesis 30, God, Hebrews, Holy Bible, home, homeland, infertility, Isaachar, Jacob, Joseph, Laban, Leah, living, Lord, love, Old Covenant, Old Testament, Parashah, Portions, Rachael, root of bitterness, Scripture, The Complete Jewish Bible, Torah, Torah commentary, Torah Portions, Torah Reading, torment, unloved, Word, Word of God, Word of the Lord, www.biblegateway.com, Yaakov, Yahveh, Yahweh, Zebulun | Leave a comment