NECESSITIES

Genesis 26:1-14
Our text begins with a famine similar to the famine with Abraham in Genesis 12:10-20. The difference between Abraham’s famine and his son Isaac’s is Abraham fled to Egypt; whereas, Isaac remained in Canaan and made the best of it. History of the text reveals that Abraham had passed away and this event took place while Esau and Jacob were very young.
All this is very important to note. First of all, it reveals to us in that our connections with God are the same regardless of what humanity may serve us. Life on earth is real and authentic and the necessities of life do not change from one generation to the next. We all face the need to eat and drink, to survive, and having to contend with other humans to do so is inevitable in the process. Whether we face this in Egypt outside the promise or Canaan inside the promise these necessities remain the same.
Actually, famine is a great example of all this. It is usually a famine of sort that drives us to acknowledge God. This is why our country is on a verge of a spiritual awakening. It is when we exhaust our means with our necessities that we have no alternative than to resort to God for our answers or solutions. Necessities have a way of demanding the true source of which they are met.
Beyond our human necessities our need to connect with God is as important and called for on all levels of life. Whether it is food or drink, relational, emotional, rejection, or acceptance, love is the common denominator that gives quality of life in all these necessities.
The source of love is God. Nonetheless, all these necessities can be met without love; however, without love they are empty and leave’s us humans craving for more until love comes and makes it all worthwhile. Greed, jealousy, control and other factors of such becomes enemies to the quality of life every human deserves and every human long’s for. Therefore, until love serves our necessities our necessities will continue to serve us every evil intent, for there are only two suppliers to necessities; love and evil, these two are the only two driving forces in humanity.
This is why our text becomes a story of how from one generation to the next, love and evil is present and the choices we make will determine which will take charge and become the master of our necessities.