Your Father's Favor

How do you get your father’s favor?  Is it yours without trying?  To get it or to keep it, are you more likely to conform or to rebel?  Or have you given on this blessing?

A father’s favor was at the center of some of our most colorful biblical stories.  Jacob and Esau vied for it.  Jacob had his mother’s favor, but took to conniving and deceiving to grab his father’s blessing.  His brother Esau took additional wives because they were more to his father’s liking.  Then Esau angrily plotted to do away with his younger brother – to retake first place with his father.

Jacob’s favorite son, Joseph, flaunted that favor over his brothers.  Joseph’s older brothers jealously removed Joseph far from their lives, even from their country, to reach for that attention and blessing.

In Jesus’ beloved story, the younger son rebelled and abused his father’s financial favor.  While his older brother conformed and worked for what he wanted of his father’s blessing.  But driven by duty, he labored unaware of what he already had.

Which one do you most sympathize with?  Sometimes getting our father’s favor is not a level playing field.  The parents of Jacob and Esau, and (next generation) of Joseph, make us cringe with their blatant favoritism.  It was asking the kids to be the adults in the room, to overcome Dad’s and Mom’s immaturity. 

We all need this favor, of father and mother.  It’s a foundation that gives confidence and strength for our challenges.  And drives some to over-achieve, even in an obsessive way.  But what should be a given for each child can become a life-long struggle – when gaining our father’s (or mother’s) favor becomes a competition with our siblings.  As win or lose.  

An encouragement in these Old Testament families is that, as far off-track and damaging as their conflicts became, we also see substantial healing many years later.  As Jacob and Esau reconcile.  As Joseph assures his brothers of his forgiveness.

It’s never too late for healing steps with family members who are still around.  When, as Jesus taught in his story, our heavenly Father’s favor is always with us.  Given by grace.  Assuring our worth.  That we are loved no matter what.  No matter the sins and omissions of earthly fathers. So, let us bask in that love every day, from which nothing can separate us.