Teaser Tuesday

 Excerpt from my new book, The Bible Tells Me So: A Year of Catechizing Directly from Scripture

"Eventually Isaacs' parents died.  Isaac married Rebekah, but they couldn’t get pregnant. Who does this remind you of? Abraham and Sarah! Yes! But “Isaac prayed to the LORD for his wife, because she was barren; and the LORD granted his prayer, and Rebekah his wife conceived.”  (Gen 25) She became pregnant with twins.  They would jostle each other in Rebekah’s tummy; they didn’t get along even before they were born.  [I take two rubber fetuses out of my prop bag.]

Hey, who're these babies? Umm, Jacob and Esau? That's right, and they already don't get along. Look, I'm Rebekah, here they are in my womb, fighting [I bang them into each other in front of my stomach like Punch & Judy puppets, accompanied by grunting sounds]. "There ain't enough room in this womb for the two of us! Then you get out! No, you get out!" And Rebekah is groaning, "Oww, y'all settle down in there!" That's weird! What's weird? Those things. What things? Those babies, they're weird looking. Oh yeah? I think they're cute [I give 'em a kiss], they look like my kids when they were growing in my wife...would you like to kiss them? No! Hey now, don't get squeamish on me, this is what you looked like when you were a couple of months old and still in your momma....and I bet she loved you even if you thought you were weird-looking.

Later on, when the first baby was being born, they saw he had more hair than most babies, so they named him Esau, which is Hebrew for 'hairy.' Ewww, gross, a hairy baby! C'mon, he wasn't hairy like a gorilla, some people just have more hair. Well, as Esau came out, they saw another little hand grabbing onto his ankle...that baby was named Jacob, which means "heel-holder." Yes, what?  Umm, how does that work?  What exactly?  You know...babies?  Oh- you mean how does sex work?  Yeah.  Ask your parents, this is a religion class, not a plumbing class."

This post links to Nancy Brandt's Teaser Tuesday.