Long, Hard Lessons of Life

There are few three-hour courses in the university of hard knocks. Many of them last for years. That’s not because we are slow learners—just stubborn.

The man God named Israel went through two classes in this school. The first was a twenty-year course taught by his father-in-law Laban. His teacher was a hard schoolmaster. That had to be humbling experience for Jacob. After all, he was the one who caught his brother by the heel the moment he was born. His Hebrew name was ya-akobh which means one who takes by the heel or one who supplants or outwits others. No wonder his brother Esau said, “Is he not rightly named Jacob? For he has supplanted me these two times. He took away my birthright, and now look, he has taken away my blessing” (Gen. 27:36). But when Jacob met Laban, he met his match. Laban took advantage of Jacob every time he could. This caused a lot of grief for Jacob’s family. But God was with Jacob. The course ended when the Lord pulled him out of this bad situation twenty years later (Gen. 31:41-42). He passed the course and came out wiser, more patient and more dependent on God.

The other course lasted over twenty years. It was more painful than the first. It began after he had lost his wife Rachel. Jacob had twelve sons, and he had a special love for his son Joseph. The older sons resented Joseph so much that they sold him to slave traders and led Jacob to believe he was dead. His first assignment in this class was to learn how to live with grief. It didn’t matter that the situation he had been led to believe was not real. His pain was just as real as if Joseph had been dead. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to his father, Joseph was enrolled in the same course through distance learning in Egypt. The haunting thought of the close bond between them being shattered must have seemed unbearable. But eventually Jacob as an old man experienced a sharp learning curve. When his sons told him Jospeh was alive, he couldn’t believe it at first. The Bible says when he heard the news his “heart stood still” (Gen. 45:26). It’s hard to break old habits of thinking and feeling when you’re older, but Jacob did. He passed the final exam. He got ready and made the trip to Egypt. When Joseph saw him, he “fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while” (Gen. 46:29). Finally, his rigorous training in the school of life was finished. While he was in school, he didn’t enjoy these classes. Looking back, he told Pharaoh. “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life” (Gen. 47:9). But now those tough school days were over. He had enjoyed the first seventeen years of Joseph’s life, and God gave him the last seventeen years of his life to live with the beloved son he thought he would never see again in this lifetime.

What a life. What an education!

Kerry

West End church of Christ • March 1, 2026