The Great Unexplained

Now Dinah, Leah’s daughter whom she bore to Jacob, went to meet the young women of the land. 

Genesis 34:1

Here is the first and last time we see Dinah happy and whole.

Dinah means judgment. She was the daughter born after her shamed mother, Leah, gave birth to honor (the meaning of Zebulun, the sixth son Leah bore to Jacob).

Dinah, now a young woman, left that morning set on finding friendship. Instead, she was intercepted and violated by someone with great power.

The rest of the story is about the silence of her father, the patriarch Jacob, and the violent revenge of her brothers. Yet we have no explanation of why Dinah, the daughter of an unloved woman who spent her life seeking honor, was the victim of a shameful crime. We know of no happy ending; we receive no information about what happened to Dinah after.

There are wrongs left unexplained in life. Traumas occur; people who should speak remain silent, and people who do speak commit violence. The one harmed remains unseen, her story happening in obscurity.

Yet in the background, God stands immovable, unchanging, faithful, revealing Himself to those who will turn to Him in the desolation. Jacob did do that, though I struggle not to hate him for remaining silent when he learned of what happened to his daughter.

I wonder what would happen in the world today, right now, if we all chose to turn to God in the Great Unexplained. What would change if we willfully turned our souls toward God instead of away from Him in the desolation we can’t comprehend?

For all his failures, Jacob did turn to God. God urged him to return to a place they had met before—a place Jacob once named El Bethel because it was the place where God had revealed Himself to Jacob when he was running from his brother Esau (see Genesis 35:7).

Throughout Jacob’s lifetime, God repeatedly calls.

Return.

Some of us may be Dinah, hiding in shame. Or Jacob, running from shame. Or maybe we are her violent brothers, enraged by shame.

Whoever we are, God is calling us.

Return.

In the wilderness of the Great Unexplained, what would happen if we practiced return? As we face the devastating, oh-no-this-might-destroy-me-and-my-family fears and concerns of life, what if we chose to turn toward instead of away from God?

Lord, I choose to practice return, again, and again. Amen.

Photo by JOHN TOWNER on Unsplash