2009 - Day 22 - A Horizontal Viewpoint

January 22, 2009 … Swindoll’s Topic for Today: A Horizontal Viewpoint

Passage of the Day: Genesis 42: 29 – 38 … 29 Then they [Joseph’s brothers] went to Jacob their father in the land of Canaan and told him all that had happened to them, saying: 30 “The man who is lord of the land spoke roughly to us, and took us for spies of the country. 31 But we said to him, ‘We are honest men; we are not spies. 32 We are twelve brothers, sons of our father; one is no more, and the youngest is with our father this day in the land of Canaan.’ 33 Then the man, the lord of the country, said to us, ‘By this I will know that you are honest men: Leave one of your brothers here with me, take food for the famine of your households, and be gone. 34 And bring your youngest brother to me; so I shall know that you are not spies, but that you are honest men. I will grant your brother to you, and you may trade in the land.’” 35 Then it happened as they emptied their sacks, that surprisingly each man’s bundle of money was in his sack; and when they and their father saw the bundles of money, they were afraid. 36 And Jacob their father said to them, “You have bereaved me: Joseph is no more, Simeon is no more, and you want to take Benjamin. All these things are against me.” 37 Then Reuben spoke to his father, saying, “Kill my two sons if I do not bring him back to you; put him in my hands, and I will bring him back to you.” 38 But he said, “My son shall not go down with you, for his brother is dead, and he is left alone. If any calamity should befall him along the way in which you go, then you would bring down my gray hair with sorrow to the grave.”

My Journal for Today: Among football fans it is said that “… it’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback.” Another pertinent saying might be, “Hindsight is always 20/20.”

I raise these old sayings because, as I read today’s passage, which focuses on old Jacob’s response to the news brought to him by his sons upon returning from Egypt, it would be easy for me to judge the old man saying that he responded with knee jerk fear. Certainly we see this very human viewpoint because the patriarch of this Hebrew family, from the lineage of Abraham, whom God had given His covenant promises, could not seem to see God in the picture of the events which had befallen his family. As Swindoll points out in his devotional for this date, Jacob had only a HORIZONTAL VIEWPOINT on what had transpired.

Upon learning what this “lord of Egypt,” who, of course, was Joseph, had done in keeping his son, Simeon, hostage, Jacob immediately assumed the worst; and seeing things – again, horizontally - from what had happened in the past, he just reacted by thinking that he now had two dead sons. And he horizontally projected that he might lose Benjamin as well if he were to be taken to Egypt. And here we are with 20/20 hindsight … as well as 20/20 foresight, being able to read/know God’s word as to the end of the story. It would be easy for believing Christians to judge Jacob and say, “Oh, you of little faith!”

But in my own rearview mirror, I can think of many times when I was confronted with life challenges and my viewpoint on life was just as horizontal as Jacob’s. Swindoll challenges his readers, “Call to mind your most recent test. Did you rest calmly in Him [i.e., God’s promises, provision, or power]? Or did you push the panic button out of fear?” Though I’m not a betting man, I would wager that most of us would have been no more vertical in our viewpoint than Jacob, taking the very human horizontal view on things as did this Jewish patriarch and reacting with fear and anxiety.

When we’re thrown into the swirl of worldly and personal events, it’s far easier to view things horizontally rather than vertically, trusting God implicitly and His truth from such biblical promises as we should know in Deuteronomy 31: 6, 8 … Isaiah 41: 10 … Romans 8: 28, 31 … Philippians 4: 6-7, 13 … or 2nd Timothy 1: 7. These truths just popped into my head as I was meditating on Jacob’s reaction; and I was convicted to have to say that given what Jacob learned and what he had experienced in life, even knowing and believing the truths of those verses above, I probably would have been a horizontal thinker just like Jacob. I hope that I could know God well enough to respond vertically to His promises rather than horizontally, reacting in fear; but I really don’t know how I would come out on such a test of my faith.

All I can do is continue to grow in my relationship with Christ; and I contend that I’m certainly much more of a vertically oriented Christian now than I was 25 years ago when I first surrendered to Christ. And knowing more and more of my Lord through His word, like those passages I referenced above, I now have more of a personal foundation from which to respond to life vertically rather than to react horizontally as did Jacob. But as it says in 2nd Cor. 13: 5, we need to continually, or at least periodically, test ourselves in the faith to see how vertically our responses to life might be.

Are you a Christian with a vertical or a horizontal viewpoint on life? I maintain that if we answer with the latter, we likely don’t know God from His word well enough. So, what must we do to become Christians with a vertical viewpoint on life? Well, we immerse ourselves in God’s word and invest the time to get to know our God intimately; and then, we abide in His truth. Because, to know God deeply is to love God deeply; and to love Him deeply will be to obey Him completely. So, I plan to do all I can daily to saturate my life with God’s word; because it is in God’s truth that I can develop a Godly, vertical viewpoint on life.

My Prayer Today: Lord, help me to be more like Joseph and less like Jacob. Amen