Thursday, March 21, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God draws Abram’s forehead to the ground
It’s in Genesis 17, one third of the way through the longest book in the Torah.
Abram prostrated himself, and God spoke to him. This is my covenant with you: you will become the father of many nations, and no longer shall you be called Abram (exalted father) but Abraham (father of multitudes). I will render you exceedingly fertile.
Yahweh became more specific.
I will make nations from you. Kings shall stem from you. I will give to you and your descendants the whole land of Canaan as a permanent possession. And I will always be their God.
There is our side of the covenant too:
You and your descendants after you must keep my covenant throughout the ages.
And thus continues the story of God, who keeps giving humans a new chance to do the right thing, and God’s people, from creation to fall to flood to rebirth, falling again into the arrogance of Babylon, the over-reaching tower of Babel, over and over falling on our face, having defined good and evil for ourselves. The wrong thing, over and over.
But in this one-third-of-the-way-through-Genesis moment, God’s moment with Abraham settles the matter. Even when they are outrageous, God will no longer consider destroying his people, or the earth.
I will always be their God.
No matter what the timeline turns out to be, he will save his people, bring them home, over nd over he will reconstruct the destruction we create and then watch with us, from closer than close, how we live our own lives. I think of Gaza, but I also see what I’ve done and not done) in my own backyard. My sense of enthusiasm waxes and wanes. God waits with me for it to wax again. (En-Theos, God within = enthusiasm)
Was it any different with Abraham? The stories in the rest of Genesis chronicle the waxing and waning of enthusiasm in all those ancient lives, first Abraham and Sarah’s son Jacob, then Jacob’s sons all twelve of them, and then the suffering of Joseph, nearly killed by his brothers, captured and jailed, all of this moved through slowly, slowly overcome with humility and grace.
The prophet is dead. Long live the prophet. First Abraham, then Jacob, then Joseph. And far ahead along the timeline is Jesus. The Messiah is dead. Long live the Messiah.
Christ has died. Christ has risen. Christ will come again.
The Lord remembers his covenant forever, which he made binding for a thousand generations.
A thousand?
How many generations since the creation of man? Start with the idea that God began his creation more like 6000 years ago rather than 4 billion, just to keep it simple. An engineering graduate of SIU (Southern Illinois University), Bodie Hodge, enjoys history at least as much as science, and genealogy more than anything. So if you read his short summary of his own genealogy (ending with Adam as Bodie’s 100thth great grandfather and Jesus the Christ as his 155th cousin) you come up with (or Bodie did, anyway) with between 88 and 104 generations for all of man’s life since the beginning.
Far fewer than a thousand generations, either way. We are not as old as we think we are.
If TODAY you hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
Jesus said outrageous things every day. We wouldn’t listen any better (or far worse) than his contemporaries listened.
I say to you today, whoever keeps my word will never see death.
Outrageous! We all die. “You are not yet fifty years old and you have seen Abraham?”
Amen, amen, I say to you, before Abraham came to be, I AM.
I AM, which means YAHWEH.
Outrageous!
They picked up stones to kill him, but Jesus walked through them untouched and left the temple.
We will soon see him on the cross. Dying, or so it seems. His death comes quickly, and his resurrection even quicker.
Outrageous, all those stories being told.
It is my Father who glorifies me. You do not know, but I know him. I know him and I keep his world. Abraham your father rejoiced to see my day! He saw it as was glad.
(Genesis 17, Psalm 105, Psalm 95, John 8)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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