Daily Devotions

⁶Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” ⁷so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. ⁸And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” ⁹For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.  Galatians 3:6-9

Next week, when we listen to the call of Abraham from Genesis 12, we will see again the shift from the pre-history stories of the previous chapters to the particularity of God singling out Abraham as the promise carrier for the world.  Anyone reading Genesis for the first time would notice that shift.  God is up to something new.

We will never know who first told that story.  We’ll never know who was the first to write it down, preserving it for future generations.  We can rest assured that it wasn’t dictated by some angel in the wilderness onto tablets of stone – but beyond that, we would be guessing.

We know a little bit more about Paul, who wrote about Abraham in his letters to the Galatians and Romans.  In those writings, Paul is doing exactly the same thing that I am doing this morning, that countless Christians do all the time.  He is reaching back into the stories of his faith, looking for connections to the present day realities of his readers. 

In Abraham, Paul sees that the intended recipients of God’s promise are all the people of the world, including Gentiles.  The universality of God’s promise would be carried through the particularity of God’s relationship with people.  People who trust God and act on that trust.

How many times, after Jesus changed his life, did Paul ask himself, “Why couldn’t I see that sooner?”  Paul’s conversion to Christianity didn’t change the language of Genesis 12, it just opened his eyes to what he had previously been blind to.

So it is with us.  Jesus healed blind people.  Faith healing isn’t about dropping your crutches in a crowded auditorium – it is about suddenly seeing yourself, your world, your reality, infused with God in ways to which you were previously blind.  And acting differently as a result.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, may we trust this day, not in ourselves or our ability to trust, but only in you, working in our lives and our world in ways that are beyond us, yet include us, for the good of all.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

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