Daily Devotions

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.”

But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.  Genesis 15:1-6

Abraham sounds discouraged.  But how can that be?  He just routed the bad guys and rescued Lot.  He was just publicly praised and prayed over by the king of Salem.  He was rich.  He was successful.  But he was discouraged.

Why?

Because he still remembered the promise.

God did not promise that Abraham would become rich.  He did not promise that Abraham would become personally worldly successful.  God said Abraham would receive land, would become the father of a great nation and his family line would prove a blessing to the world.  That was the promise.  For childless Abraham, what mattered was a child.

Something must have gotten into the water in the congregation I serve because we have pregnant women all over the place.  I don’t know all their stories but I know some.  Some have longed for a child for a long time and it hasn’t been easy to get to this point.  Some have had scary moments along the way.  Yet each knows they are walking a holy path, bringing a new life of hope and promise into the world.

Abraham reminds us today what is important.

He also reminds us today that prayer need not be a pious prattling of pretention.  His prayer sounds direct, honest, maybe a little whiny as he seems to have been in a whiny mood.  It was, above all, an honest reflection of his discouragement. He trusted God enough to blast God with complaint.  Isn’t there room in love for that?  Even for honest complaint and open disagreement?

So God reminds Abraham of the promise and Abraham believes what he hears.  He believed.  He trusted.  And that, for today, is enough.

Let us pray:  Tear our hearts open, O God, that we might come to you with plain words that tell the truth about where we are, how we feel, what we think, where we hurt, what we hope for, and who we love.  May our desire be to trust you, not impress you.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

So the enemy took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way; they also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.

Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner; these were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods, and the women and the people.  Genesis 14:11-16

There’s no getting around the fact that the Old Testament, especially the historical accounts, includes a lot of fighting.  Brutal fighting.  Merciless fighting.  The 14^th chapter of Genesis begins with a list of local thugs all vying for position at the top of the sand hill.

They are listed as “kings” but hardly in the sense that we would use that term.  Given the fluid geographical boundaries, constantly shifting alliances, they look much more like what we today would call “gangs”, each protecting their turf.

So it was that Lot found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Suddenly the widely watered plain that looked so good to him turned out to look good to someone else as well.  Lot and his retinue were taken captive.

Again, Abraham proves the hero.  He musters his troops – 318 of them – and heads out after his nephew.  You can almost hear the bugle as the cavalry hits the hot trail.  We immediately know how this will end and we don’t have to wait long.  Abraham brings them back alive.

What happens next?  You can read that on your own but here are the highlights.  Abraham is praised by the king of Sodom and blessed by the king of Salem, who doubled as the high priest Melchizedek.  God/War, hand in hand.  Everyone claiming God is on their side…and to the victor goes the spoils.

Perhaps the writer of Hebrews was remembering this story when, in the 6^th and 7^th chapters, he extols the virtues of Melchizedek but only as a means of elevating Jesus as the highest of priests, the priest to end priests.  Jesus has rescued us from the enemy who would steal us, from our own wanderlust.

Jesus didn’t raise an army.  He told Peter to put his sword away.  Jesus gave himself to his accusers.  He didn’t die in glory.  He suffered but caused no suffering.  This is the Jesus we follow.  This is the way that we walk.  This is the hope of the world.

Let us pray:  Dear God, we always seek an easier, softer way.  We look for quick answers to tough questions.  Easier to steal than to create.  Easier to demonize than to understand.  Easier to kill than to befriend.  So we pray for peace to fall upon us, in our lives, upon our world.  May we do today what makes for peace, for this, we believe, is to follow Jesus.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

So the enemy took all the goods of Sodom and Gomorrah, and all their provisions, and went their way; they also took Lot, the son of Abram’s brother, who lived in Sodom, and his goods, and departed.

Then one who had escaped came and told Abram the Hebrew, who was living by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and of Aner; these were allies of Abram. When Abram heard that his nephew had been taken captive, he led forth his trained men, born in his house, three hundred eighteen of them, and went in pursuit as far as Dan. He divided his forces against them by night, he and his servants, and routed them and pursued them to Hobah, north of Damascus. Then he brought back all the goods, and also brought back his nephew Lot with his goods, and the women and the people.  Genesis 14:11-16

There’s no getting around the fact that the Old Testament, especially the historical accounts, includes a lot of fighting.  Brutal fighting.  Merciless fighting.  The 14^th chapter of Genesis begins with a list of local thugs all vying for position at the top of the sand hill.

They are listed as “kings” but hardly in the sense that we would use that term.  Given the fluid geographical boundaries, constantly shifting alliances, they look much more like what we today would call “gangs”, each protecting their turf.

So it was that Lot found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Suddenly the widely watered plain that looked so good to him turned out to look good to someone else as well.  Lot and his retinue were taken captive.

Again, Abraham proves the hero.  He musters his troops – 318 of them – and heads out after his nephew.  You can almost hear the bugle as the cavalry hits the hot trail.  We immediately know how this will end and we don’t have to wait long.  Abraham brings them back alive.

What happens next?  You can read that on your own but here are the highlights.  Abraham is praised by the king of Sodom and blessed by the king of Salem, who doubled as the high priest Melchizedek.  God/War, hand in hand.  Everyone claiming God is on their side…and to the victor goes the spoils.

Perhaps the writer of Hebrews was remembering this story when, in the 6^th and 7^th chapters, he extols the virtues of Melchizedek but only as a means of elevating Jesus as the highest of priests, the priest to end priests.  Jesus has rescued us from the enemy who would steal us, from our own wanderlust.

Jesus didn’t raise an army.  He told Peter to put his sword away.  Jesus gave himself to his accusers.  He didn’t die in glory.  He suffered but caused no suffering.  This is the Jesus we follow.  This is the way that we walk.  This is the hope of the world.

Let us pray:  Dear God, we always seek an easier, softer way.  We look for quick answers to tough questions.  Easier to steal than to create.  Easier to demonize than to understand.  Easier to kill than to befriend.  So we pray for peace to fall upon us, in our lives, upon our world.  May we do today what makes for peace, for this, we believe, is to follow Jesus.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

So Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife, and all that he had, and Lot with him, into the Negeb. Now Abram was very rich in livestock, in silver, and in gold. He journeyed on by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, to the place where he had made an altar at the first; and there Abram called on the name of the Lord.

Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them living together; for their possessions were so great that they could not live together, and there was strife between the herders of Abram’s livestock and the herders of Lot’s livestock. At that time the Canaanites and the Perizzites lived in the land. 

Then Abram said to Lot, “Let there be no strife between you and me, and between your herders and my herders; for we are kindred. Is not the whole land before you? Separate yourself from me. If you take the left hand, then I will go to the right; or if you take the right hand, then I will go to the left.”

Lot looked about him, and saw that the plain of the Jordan was well watered everywhere like the garden of the Lord, like the land of Egypt, in the direction of Zoar; this was before the Lord had destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah. So Lot chose for himself all the plain of the Jordan, and Lot journeyed eastward; thus they separated from each other. Abram settled in the land of Canaan, while Lot settled among the cities of the Plain and moved his tent as far as Sodom. Now the people of Sodom were wicked, great sinners against the Lord.  Genesis 13:1-13

Lot’s father died young, leaving Lot in the care of his grandfather.  When his grandfather died, Lot moved in with his uncle, Abraham.  Lot was with Abraham from the beginning of their journey to the land of Canaan.  As Abraham prospered, it seems that he shared his bounty with Lot.

So it was that, as they got closer to the promised land, they began to run into those particular problems associated with the wealthy – we have too much stuff and no place to put it.

Here Abraham makes a decision that restores him in our eyes.  He allows Lot to choose where to settle.  Since the right thing to do would have been to defer to his benevolent elder, Lot should have taken the less choice looking land.  But he didn’t.  He took the pretty land and stuck Abraham with the wilderness.

That choice lifts Abraham back into high esteem and it lowers our estimation of Lot.

Today’s lesson is that things are not always as they seem.  Wealth does not equate wisdom and what looks good at first might not seem such a great choice on down the line. 

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, far too often we look for the quick fix, the easy path, the lowest hanging fruit.  We need patience and wisdom.  Teach us to wait when we’re in a hurry, to think of tomorrow, not just today, and to trust your guidance along the way.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels. But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.” And Pharaoh gave his men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had.  Genesis 12:14-20

This little nugget needs to shock you.  It is the sort of passage we find in the Bible that we are likely to just skip past as we follow the plot.  So how about if we describe it this way – Abraham pimped his wife to save his own skin.  And Pharaoh took him up on it.

Immediately we see what is at stake – everything.

Should Abraham lose Sarah then the promise of fathering offspring who would inherit the land would go away with her.  If…that is…she really mattered.

Evidently she didn’t.

As I said yesterday, this story was written long after the events it describes.  Centuries after the events it describes.  Which means the story was carefully crafted.  That actually makes it more surprising to us.  I’m always surprised when I cross those stories that don’t put the heroes of Israel in such a great light.  Our modern tendency is to bury the foibles and mistakes and misjudgments of our heroes.

But what if this story was finally put together in lasting form as the people of Israel were crawling back from a generation of suffering in Babylon, beginning to rebuild their lives in the land they had almost forgotten?  What if they were still trying to come to grips with the shock of thinking themselves the chosen people of God and yet watching everything fall apart?  What question might they have been asking?

How about – What did we do wrong? Or – Where do we go from here?

And what if, in their self reflection, they decided that their lack of real devotion to God was the seed that sprouted in all sorts of misbehavior and thus they felt themselves having been judged harshly and punished by God through the Babylonians…but now they were getting another chance to start again?  They had turned away from God just as Abraham had used Sarah for his own protection?

So we see it again.  The real message of our faith isn’t our own purity, perfection, or performance – the real message of our faith is the providence, the protection, the provision, and the forgiving love of God.  God is the God of the seventy times seven chances to turn around and try again. 

Our mistakes do not define us.  Thus there is no need to bury our foibles and mistakes and misjudgments and sin.  Better always to own them, acknowledge them, confess them, make right what can be made right, and move on.

Let us pray:  Forgive us, O Lord, when we take matters into our own hands, driven by motives of fear, selfishness, and pride.  Forgive us when we use others rather than loving them.  And give us the humility that allows us to forgive ourselves.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.”  Genesis 12:10-13

This surprising little left turn in the plot of our story has much to teach us…or at least it raises a lot of questions that invite us to dig a little. 

First, do you see the allusion to the exodus story?  Abraham and Sarah are facing hard times so they head to Egypt.  Sound familiar?  Doesn’t it remind you of Joseph, left for dead, but rescued from the well and sent off to Egypt?  A little later his brothers are facing a drought so they too head off to Egypt.  In the New Testament, that other Joseph is warned by God of Herod’s murderous plot so he takes Mary and baby Jesus to Egypt. 

What is going on here with all of these “bad times leads to leaving Israel for a foreign land only to be later rescued by God” stories?  Is it that God lacks creativity and keeps rewriting the same story?  Not so much.

It is passages like this that bolster the argument that the central life experience that shaped the Old Testament was the gut-wrenching defeat of Israel by Babylon, which then led to a ruinous generation of captivity and servitude between about 586 BCE and 528 BCE that is commonly called the Babylonian Exile. 

That period of loss and cultural dislocation, and all the years which followed as Israel picked itself back up out of the ashes, is when the various pieces of written and oral history were woven together into the coherent narrative we see as the Old Testament.

(If you find this interesting and want to do a little background reading, click here.  This paper does a pretty good job of reviewing the questions around how the Old Testament came together.)

The point here is that hard times do not mean that God has abandoned his people or his promise.  Hard times do require hard decisions and call many things into question (we will talk more Abraham’s questionable ethics tomorrow), but hard times often are the necessary twists in the journey that strip us of pretentions and get us back on the right road.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, we pray today for people who are facing difficult times in their lives – facing hunger, sickness, civil war, wild fires, grief, and all that often leads us to question your presence and power.  Make a way in the wilderness and bring light into darkness.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages toward the Negeb.  Genesis 12:7-9

“And there he built an altar to the Lord…”

I’m a Christian of the Lutheran persuasion.  I was baptized as a baby because that is what you did.  I doubt many in the family could have given much of a theologically sophisticated rationale for this practice but it happened.  Just me, my mom, a rebellious Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod pastor, and his wife were in the church that Sunday afternoon.

Later, when I was in college and ready to actually join a church on purpose, it was the American Lutheran Church that my dad and family attended.  There too, while my memory includes meeting with Pastor Peterson several times and reading the books he gave me to read, while I remember being convinced by the Lutheran understanding of grace and trust in Jesus, the fact is that I had family roots there and they trumped everything else.

The Lutheran movement began in Germany and spread to the Scandinavian countries.  We would like to think it spread because of the novelty of actually reading the Bible closely with a willingness to align our church life and teachings with what we found there.  But I’m thinking it also had a lot to do with large landowners and the upper class growing increasingly tired of paying fealty to Rome.

Then the Lutherans came to the United States.  Who came?  Seldom the eldest brothers or anyone else who had much of a life or modest prospects in the old country.  It was the cast offs, the ne-er-do-wells, and the troubled.  Moving to America was more about running away from bad prospects than it was about launching forth into new possibilities.  The point is – it wasn’t the pastors who jumped on those first boats.

The immigrants landed and were processed.  They got on trains and headed west to where their relatives were settling.  They made their land claim, built sod houses, started scratching the dirt, and strove to stay alive another year.  But they had brought their hymnbooks, their Bibles, and their faith. And eventually, they banded together and built a special building and then sent word back to the old country that they were ready for pastor.

They KNEW that God was in their journey.

So it was then.  So it is now.  God is always in our journey.

Let us pray:  Guide us ever, Great Redeemer, to the lands which stretch before us, to the challenges ahead.  Guide our feet, our dreams, our hoping.  Guide us on the journey inward, to those places far from home, to new vistas, strange encounters, all the places in which we roam.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land.  Genesis 12:3-6

Listening again to the stories of Abraham and Sarah means looking back to history before history.  Looking back to a culture that was very very different from our own.  A time before time. 

The temptation is to ignore that distance and just take the story as it comes to us.  God says “Go to Canaan” and Abraham loads up the family and takes off.  The Bible says that he was 75 years old at the time and we think of our Uncle Roger who is about that age as well.  Some of us imagine the Beverly Hillbillies on camels.  Few of us catch the reference to “the persons whom they had acquired in Haran” and realize that Abraham was a slave owner in a culture dependent on the practice of slavery.

One person in church on Sunday told me that he hated this whole story.  He has spent years struggling with the idea that God would send Abraham into an otherwise peaceful land inhabited by Canaanites in order to kill them and steal their land.  He has…don’t you think….a point?

Delegations from Israel and Palestine are talking again about an illusive peace.  We might think their struggle reaches only back to 1949 but we know better.  The struggle for supremacy in that area dates back to this time before time.  The argument remains, “God told Abraham to go get this land for US.”  So they fight about who gets to be us.

We get into trouble, I think, when we look back into history only to justify what we want today.  I know that we don’t and can’t have access to “pure history”, to the unblemished, unvarnished, unspun account of what really happened.  So the values best imported into listening to history might be humility, open-mindedness, and judgment.

We look at life and see a tension between things staying the same and things changing.  We want what we like to stay the same, and we want what we don’t like to change.  The universe, however, seems little moved by what we want.  Change, movement, is the constant reality.  And movement is what is happening in this story.

This is a story about letting go of what was for the promise of something better.  About how one man following God leads to uprooting his whole family, their whole lives.  It is about a clash of cultures, of ways of being in the world.  Ultimately, and here is where our bias enters, it is all about working out God’s promises for the good of all.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, as parents we hate to see our children fight.  We are so often afraid because we see a future our children do not see.  As your promise called a people to get on the move toward something better, may we trust as well in your wisdom to take us where we cannot see.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”  Genesis 12:1-3

Pastor Junfeng Tan is the new Associate Pastor now serving with me at Faith Lutheran Church.  Yesterday was his first Sunday to preach.  His task was to kick off our new August sermon series following the lives of Abraham and Sarah.  Every Sunday is a “God moment” for me, but yesterday proved particularly so.

Pastor Tan grew up in Northern China.  He went to school to study Chinese literature and worked teaching Chinese to English speakers.  He became friends with a Roman Catholic priest who was his student.  Eventually he moved to the University of Minnesota to earn a Phd. In Chinese Literature.  There he found the care of the Chinese Hospitality Center, begun by former Lutheran missionaries.  He went to their Bible studies that became a worshipping community.  He was baptized and began seminary studies.  He met and married his wife, a Korean, at the end of his senior year and just prior to beginning his first call in South Dakota.  They adopted two boys, one from China and one from Korea.  And now his family lives in Houston.  Whew.

So there I was in worship, listening to a man who has been on a very improbable journey in his life, preaching about another improbable journey, from Ur in the Chaldeans to the land of Canaan…as he helped us see that this is only one journey.

As the world would keep score, we do not share the family lineage of Abraham and Sarah.  Yet we are blood relatives – Jesus the direct descendant and we grafted into the family through the blood of Jesus.

Our life is a journey, following God’s will, to unforeseen places with surprising twists and turns but all for the good of others.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, thank you for guiding and encouraging your people to follow as you prompt, opening doors, shutting off escape routes.  Thank you for bringing Pastor Tan to Houston.  May you bless him, his family, and all of us as we seek each day to do your will.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

¹⁷By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac. He who had received the promises was ready to offer up his only son, ¹⁸of whom he had been told, “It is through Isaac that descendants shall be named for you.” ¹⁹He considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead—and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back.  Hebrews 11:17-19

I took a philosophy course when I was in college as an elective.  I can’t remember the title of the course, what we read, what we wrote, or what we learned.  But with crystal clarity I do remember my professor telling us that, in his opinion, the story of Abraham and Isaac is the most disgusting, horrific, story in the Bible and it ought to be removed.

That line affected me on lots of levels.  I’ve never forgotten it.  It wasn’t the idea of “removing” a story from the Bible that stuck with me, it was the shock I felt at hearing him talk about a story in a completely opposite way from what I had thought my whole life.

At some point I had been taught – and I say “at some point” because I have no memory of how it came about – that the story of Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice Isaac was proof positive that Abraham was a man of incredible faith.  It made Abraham a hero in my book…and Isaac incredibly lucky that God intervened when God did.  The story was intended, in my young mind, to encourage me toward the blind faith of Abraham.

By attacking the story, my professor was challenging my conception of faith.  He was putting himself (and me) above the story.  He was thinking critically.  He was drawing out the implications of where such a story would lead.  That was the moment for me when I quit trusting “what I thought I once knew” and became open to the possibility that faith might lead me to new places, new ideas, new possibilities.

I think, at that moment, my faith became faith.

Christians, Moslems, and Jews all trace their family stories back through Abraham.  Thus we share ideas of faith, devotion, following God’s promises, benefiting others, and willingness to sacrifice.  But look behind the broad strokes and it is clear that we all remember very different things about Abraham and we draw very different conclusions.

I’m thinking we should talk more and fight less.  And I’m thinking we should look far more closely at what we are willing to sacrifice and what we would do well to simply let go.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, stories define us yet stories can also bind us.  Bless us with the openness to hear old stories with new ears, with the willingness to truly engage, and with compassion toward those captured by very different stories than ours.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.