Let me tell you 'bout the birds and the bees…

The Word for today:
Genesis 29:1-30

When I felt my sons were ready for it, I gave them The Talk. I told them all about the birds and the bees.

But not in the way you're probably thinking. I'm pretty sure they'd already learned about those birds and bees on the school bus, or in the locker room. (Nobody ever formally told me about those birds and bees either, but we somehow manage to find out.)

No, I gave them the birds and bees Talk that I wish someone had given me long ago:

Birds should not marry bees, because birds with bees are never a 'match made in heaven.'

Both Moses and Paul explained why:

You shall not intermarry with them, giving your daughters to their sons or taking their daughters for your sons,  for they would turn away your sons from following me to serve other gods. (Deuteronomy 7:3-4)

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what fellowship has light with darkness? (see 2 Corinthians 6:14)

Esau had married Hittite women, and they were a major headache for his parents:

Rebekah said to Isaac, "I am sick and tired of Esau's foreign wives. If Jacob also marries one of these Hittites, I might as well die." (Genesis 27:46)

So Isaac made sure to send Jacob in search of his own kind:

Isaac called Jacob, greeted him, and told him, "Don't marry a Canaanite. Go instead to Mesopotamia, to the home of your grandfather Bethuel, and marry one of the young women there, one of your uncle Laban's daughters. (Genesis 28:1-2)

***

"You can respect the bees," I told my sons. "You can even love them platonically, but don't consider marrying one of them.

"And don't settle for some nominal, lukewarm 'Christian,' either. Keep looking until you find a full-fledged Jesus Freak, like your Mom. Don't be joined to any half-baked, half-fast, spiritual half-breed with one foot in the Promised Land and the other still stuck on the far side of Jordan. She will dilute your faith and drag you down.

"Make sure she's a bird, not a bee. Fill your life with winging and singing, not stinging!"

***

Because you won't hear all the facts of life in a locker room, I wanted you to hear The Talk that I never heard.   Don't ever say that you weren't told.

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