Joel M Bradshaw

 38“These twenty years I have been with you. Your ewes and your female goats have not miscarried, and I have not eaten the rams of your flocks. 39What was torn by wild beasts I did not bring to you. I bore the loss of it myself. From my hand you required it, whether stolen by day or stolen by night. 40There I was: by day the heat consumed me, and the cold by night, and my sleep fled from my eyes. 41These twenty years I have been in your house. I served you fourteen years for your two daughters, and six years for your flock, and you have changed my wages ten times. 42If the God of my father, the God of Abraham and the Fear of Isaac, had not been on my side, surely now you would have sent me away empty-handed. God saw my affliction and the labor of my hands and rebuked you last night.”–Genesis 31

Jacob had fled from Laban in secret and Laban was not happy. Rachel had stolen some family gold and her dad was looking for it. Rachel deceived others as well, it seems. She is well-matched for Jacob!

Anyway, Jacob described the way he went about difficult matters. He had kept his word and shown both grace and honor to his father-in-law. There are things we cannot control in life. Trust God with those things. There are other matters we certainly can control. Honor/obey God with those things. Jacob could control his responses to the harder events of life. He could control how he reacted and what he laid on Laban’s plate.–JMB