For Those in Need

Then the LORD said to Jacob, "Return to the land of your fathers and to your kindred, and I will be with you."
GENESIS 31:3
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For Those in Need
It is manifest what great troubles and annoyances Jacob endured, if, indeed, it is necessary for the Lord to have regard for him and to rescue him from these straits. For the Lord does not speak in vain, nor does He offer His Word to the lazy and smug, but to those who are in need, who toil, who are afflicted and are undergoing a very difficult conflict against the flesh and all external appearances, that is, against those things which according to human sense and reason fight against faith, as Hebrews 11 says, so that the afflicted can rely on the sole protection of the Word of God and be sustained by it. Wisdom does not live "in the land of those who live pleasantly," says Job (cf. 28:13), because it is a word of the cross and despair. It pertains only to the troubled and mortified, the despised, those driven into despair, and the oppressed. Such was Jacob in his exile in the house of his unjust and greedy father-in-law. . . In these straits the Lord speaks to him when he would have nothing else but faith and prayer left, embraces him when he is kept at arm's length and hated by all men, and supports his plan to depart: He orders him to leave a family group that is so hostile to himself and to his wives, and to take thought for his own house. By this word God testifies that the whole life of the patriarch Jacob and all its activities are pleasing to Him.
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