Do not imitate what is evil but what is good. 3 John 11
This week in Meeting God in Quiet Places, we're in Chapter 7, where F. LaGard Smith has an interesting parable with Jacob sheep and imitation.
If you've never heard of Jacob sheep, you may be surprised about the origin of the name. As you see in the picture, the Jacob sheep are spotted, an almost jarring aspect of what a sheep is supposed to look like. Aren't all sheep either white or black? Well, most sheep in Syria in the time of Jacob were white. What difference did that make to Jacob? That's where the story gets interesting.
Jacob had worked for 14 years for his father-in-law Laban, when he decided to return to his own country. Laban was willing to allow him to take a part of the herds to create his own wealth, but he was especially happy to agree with Jacob's terms. Jacob told Laban that he would take only the speckled and spotted animals. Laban immediately had his sons grab all the speckled and spotted sheep and goats, and remove them to a far away place. Having cheated Jacob for 14 years, Laban wasn't about to be fair now.
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But God appeared to Jacob in a dream and gave him a formula for breeding speckled and spotted sheep. God told him to have the animals mate before multi-colored objects. Jacob cut dark branches so that streaks of white showed and placed them before the watering trough. And he would also simply put spotted animals in front of the mating animals. Whichever device Jacob used, it worked! And he quickly became a prosperous man. Now the questions is: Did what the sheep looked at when they were mating really affect the color of their offspring?
More interesting for us is the question: Does what we act out in our lives depend on what we focus our attention on? Are we like Jacob's sheep? Yes, it's true. Human nature dictates that like Jacob's mating sheep, we mimic whatever we focus on in our lives!
More on this tomorrow. Give the idea of imitation some thought today.
Blessings...Mimi
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