This past weekend, my wife and I took one of our granddaughters home. One of the pleasures of that assignment was the opportunity to swim in the lake, near the spot where my father had years ago built a tent platform cottage and where our family had spent many happy vacations.
But age takes its toll, and we found that getting out of the water is more difficult these days. I found an ideal staff to help us with that task—both of us using it to steady us on the rocky lake bottom.
As I thought about that staff, it reminded me of a comment by one of the nineteenth-century writers with regard to Hebrews 11:2121By faith Jacob, when he was a dying, blessed both the sons of Joseph; and worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff. (Hebrews 11:21), “By faith Jacob, when he was a dying . . . worshipped, leaning upon the top of his staff.”
It was, he said, the highest point of Jacob’s life—no longer scheming, nor leaning on his own intelligence, but rather worshipping while leaning.
I brought that staff home with me to remind me of the lesson that Jacob took all his life to learn. How often we lean on that broken reed that pierces our hand instead of “learning to lean”—as the hymn reminds us—on Him who never fails.
R. K. Gorgas