Genesis 33:1-5: in context

Jacob approaches the meeting he has dreaded for twenty years. He sees Esau coming with four hundred men, and, fearing the worst, he arranges his family defensively and goes ahead of them, bowing to the ground seven times as he nears his brother. He is braced for hostility, perhaps for slaughter, from the brother he had wronged. But then the unexpected happens: Esau runs to meet him, embraces him, falls on his neck, kisses him, and they weep together. The vengeance Jacob feared does not come; instead there is embrace and tears.

The striking thing about this meeting is how different it proves from what Jacob feared. For twenty years he had dreaded Esau's revenge; as the moment approached, he was consumed with fear, bracing for hostility, arranging his family so that some might escape if Esau attacked, bowing low in anxious appeasement. He expected the worst. And the worst did not come. Esau ran to embrace him; the four hundred men were not an army of vengeance; the meeting Jacob had dreaded became a reunion of tears and reconciliation. The thing he feared proved far better than he had imagined. This speaks to the many fears we carry about things we dread. Like Jacob, we can spend long seasons dreading some feared encounter or outcome, bracing for the worst, consumed with anxiety about what might happen. And often, as with Jacob, the dreaded thing proves far better than we feared. The hostility we braced for does not come; the outcome we dreaded turns out otherwise; God meets us in the feared moment with unexpected grace. Much of the suffering of our fears is in the dreading, and much of what we dread never comes to pass as we imagined. I sought the LORD, the psalmist says, and he delivered me from all my fears. This does not mean nothing hard ever happens; some feared things do come. But it reminds us how often the dread outruns the reality, how often the thing we brace for proves better than we feared, how often God turns the feared hostility into unexpected grace. This calls us to bring our fears to God rather than being consumed by them. Jacob's long dread of Esau proved largely unfounded; the meeting he feared became an embrace. And much of what we dread will prove the same, better than we feared, met by a grace we did not expect. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, Jesus says. When we are consumed with dread about some feared encounter or outcome, we may remember Jacob, who braced for vengeance and was met with an embrace, and entrust our fears to the God who often turns the dreaded thing into unexpected grace, delivering us from fears that prove, in the end, far larger than the reality.

When I am consumed with dread about some feared encounter or outcome, bracing for the worst as Jacob braced for Esau's vengeance, can I remember how often the dreaded thing proves better than feared, as Esau's expected hostility became an embrace and tears, and entrust my fears to the God who delivers us from fears that outrun the reality, often turning the thing we dread into an unexpected grace?