Contrast the qualities of character in Abram that caused him, on one hand, to lie to the pharaoh, and then, on the other, to deal so unselfishly with Lot.
Prayer Time
As I think of Abram and Sarai, who were available for God’s purposes, I will pray that, like them, I may be a friend of God.
I want especially to pray daily for these persons:
How the Drama Develops GENESIS 1–13
I call the Bible a drama because it is. It has love, intrigue, suspense, and tragedy. And it has the two most significant lead characters conceivable—God and our human race.
The truths the Bible seeks to communicate probably could not be communicated in any other way. I remember a fine novelist who said that life’s most important insights must be put into symbolic language because straight factual language isn’t strong enough or sensitive enough to bear them.
The biblical drama—the ultimate drama, from which all other dramas take their plot line—begins with only one Person in view. Call God the First Person Singular. First, indeed—who else, since God is the beginning? Person, indeed—since our very definitions of personhood begin in God. Singular, indeed—in the sense of being unique, for who can be compared with God?
I like the way God creates, speaking everything into existence. I like this because of what it tells us about the kind of God we’re doing business with. We have a communicating God, one who honors the creation by speaking to it with words.
—From Heroes, Rogues, and the Rest: Lives That Tell the Story of the Bible (2014); page 4.
But God chooses not to remain alone, and a creation comes into existence. It is perfect in every way until the entrance of a villain. (Is the villain perhaps the very fact of choice itself?) Suddenly the Edenic scene is shattered, and the human race finds itself refugees from perfection. Millennia later, we are still refugees, still looking for our Eden.
Adam and Eve seem to take the seed of the forbidden fruit with them as they leave the garden, because from that point forward, tragedies of sin unfold. First there is the story of Cain and Abel, with murder in the family, springing from ego twisted into jealousy, and born in (of all places) a setting of worship.
And then it gets worse, with humanity becoming so evil that “every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually” (Genesis 6:5). So the Flood comes; it is as if nature itself cannot endure such human evil. The human story begins again, with a redeemed minority of Noah and his family. But the Flood is hardly past when Noah himself stumbles and one of his sons, Ham, compounds the evil. Then, with the passage of still more time, comes Babel. Here is the sin of Eden reenacted, as humans seek to compete with and displace God.
But through all this story is a continual strand of hope. It begins with Abel, who reaches out to God in worship, which the New Testament writer will describe as faith (Hebrews 11:4). And when the world becomes so shamefully, tragically evil, along comes Noah—“a righteous man, blameless in his generation” (Genesis 6:9).
The chapters following Noah seem to hold little promise. There is the embarrassment within Noah’s own family, then the debacle at Babel, and a series of names that seem inconsequential. But suddenly, there in the midst of those names are Abram and Sarai; and with them, the biblical drama takes a whole new turn. They represent a line of promise that will continue all the way through the Old Testament and will take on new significance in the New Testament as the followers of Jesus Christ are identified as the offspring of Abraham, and heirs with him of God’s promise (Galatians 3:29). The drama is not only unfolding; early in the first act we see the possibilities of an eventual climax.
Seeing Life Through Scripture
If we read the Creation story with faith-sensitive eyes, we can’t help asking ourselves this question: If God has indeed made us, what manner of creatures ought we to be?
And still more, if we are made in God’s image, to what degree are we reflecting that image? How badly blurred is the image of God in my life, as I live out my days in deeds, in words, and in thoughts?
Could a neutral observer—an angel, perhaps—ever see in me evidence that I am made in the image of God and that the breath of God is in me?
I must also remind myself that I live in a world that is at odds with the purposes of God. That’s why we pray, “Your will be done, / on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). We are refugees not only from the perfection of Eden but also from our own best intentions and from the wholeness of life that God has intended for us.
I don’t want to be part of the personal violence that characterized itself in Cain or of the culture-violence that characterized Noah’s day; nor do I want to become absorbed in the Babel kind of society in which life seems to be a rather meaningless confusion. But I have a pattern—Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abram, Sarai. You and I can be God’s people, personal outposts of a lost Eden, in our time and place.
The Sum of It All
“So God created humankind in his image,
in the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).
| GENESIS 14–15; PSALM 11 | Week 2, Day 1 |
In those ancient days, wars between city-states went on constantly. Abraham was himself a kind of traveling city, with his 318 trained men; and his little army turned the tide. I think the writer of Genesis sees the victory as an achievement of faith and of Abraham’s skilled leadership.
Abraham refuses any reward for himself, but he gives a tithe to Melchizedek, king of Salem (which means peace, shalom). Melchizedek is a mysterious figure, open to our speculation. The New Testament pays him particular attention (Hebrews 5–7), portraying him as a forerunner of Christ.
But again Abraham struggles. When the Lord says, “Do not be afraid, Abram . . . ; your reward shall be very great” (15:1), Abraham reminds God that he still doesn’t have an heir. Will his holdings simply pass to his steward, Eliezer of Damascus, “a slave born in my house” (15:3)? It is a plaintive cry.
What follows is at once inspiring, mysterious, and symbolic. After God has reassured Abraham of the divine plan, God asks him to make a sacrifice. Abraham has to drive scavenger birds away from the sacrifice; they seem like a malevolent force. Then Abraham has a terrifying dream, which reveals some of the peril that will one day threaten his descendants, even as the scavengers have invaded his place of worship.
PRAYER: When I am in a dark and uncertain place, O God, reassure me with your presence and promise; in Christ our Lord. Amen.
Recall a time when, in the face of what seemed impossible, you “believed the LORD.”
| GENESIS 16–17; PSALM 12 | Week 2, Day 2 |
Sarah, who is, of course, as fine an example of faith as Abraham, wavers as does Abraham. In frustration, she attributes her childlessness to God (16:2), and judges (as Abraham seems to have done in Chapter 15) that she will have to take matters into her own hands.
Her solution was probably a rather common one in that time and culture; she and Abraham use her maid as a surrogate mother. But when the maid, Hagar, finds that she has succeeded