“I’m not a good servant to the Lord, Mother, because I’m not the one chosen to be his servant. If I take it upon myself, I’ll be a usurper.”

“You don’t have to have the birthright to be a servant of God,” said Rebekah. “There was never a chance for me to have the birthright, but still I spent my childhood trying to serve God. And finally my day came. As yours will, my son.”

“My day? My day for what—to be at war with my brother?”

“To have your father show you that he sees the man you are.”

“Fathers never see their sons for what they are,” said Jacob.

“That’s not so.”

“You’ve told me yourself how Grandfather never valued Father, either.”

“He never really showed Isaac how he valued him.”

“It’s the same thing.”

“No it’s not,” said Rebekah. “And I didn’t mean your father Isaac, anyway. I meant your Father in heaven.”

“He knows me. He knows us all.”

“Sometimes I wonder why he doesn’t just tell your father the way things should be.”

“Because the problem isn’t that Father can’t see, it’s that he won’t see, and the Lord doesn’t make us do things, he only teaches us and hopes we’ll use the things he taught.”

“So what has God taught you? And how are you going to use it?”

“What are you asking me to do, Mother?”

“Just keep being the man you are, and pray that your brother will realize what road he’s headed down and come back.”

“Or that Father will finally get the proof he needs to see what Esau is becoming. Proof that is witnessed by someone other than me.”

Later, Rebekah would realize that Jacob must have started planning then the incident that finally brought things to a head.

But at the time, the only thing Rebekah worried about was that she shouldn’t have spoken so openly to Jacob about her worries concerning Esau. Yet within the family, Jacob was the only one besides Rebekah who understood the danger from Esau’s behavior. And should she let him feel completely isolated in the family? Wasn’t it good for the obedient son to know that his mother understood the man he had become, even if his father didn’t see it and his brother despised him for it?

I didn’t make Esau’s choices for him. Nor is it my fault Isaac refuses to see. Though it’s unbearable that he doesn’t. Jacob is Isaac as he must have been as a child. He even looks more like Isaac—Esau looks like my father, except for the red hair.

Maybe that’s the problem. Isaac can’t love or value any man who even looks like himself.