Abraham

So I’ve been re-reading the story of Abraham. 

There are some things that don’t surprise me.  I still find parts of it difficult and wierd.  (Not that this is a bad thing.  I’d be much more suspicious that the bible was a human construct if it wasn’t for the wierd parts.)  I won’t go into these things that trouble me here.  If you know the story you already know the tough parts.  If you don’t, my one-sentence summaries won’t change that.

The thing I want to spend some time and energy on, today, is some things I never noticed before.  These things are kind of interesting and helpful, I think.

The first thing that I noticed is that it seems like Abraham, for all his flaws (such as being an apparent compulsive liar) is a prototype for how to live a whole life walking with God.

When we become adults, God asks us something.  He says, “Do you trust me?  Do you trust me to leave everything you’ve known behind?  Will you follow me, even though you don’t know where you’re going.”

God asked Abraham that question first, of course.  Abraham had a pretty good answer.

Abraham was traveling with Lot, his nephew.  Rather than let business get in the way of the important things, Abraham decided they would be wise to sever their “business ties.”  He didn’t try to leverage this into the thing that would benefit him the most.  He said “Look, we need to split up, here.  But you choose, Lot: If you want the left, you’ve got the left.  If you want the right, you choose the right.  I’ll be happy with the direction you don’t want.”

In some sense, Abraham shot himself in the foot.  He sacrificed the unimportant things for the important ones.  And he won even the unimportant things for all this.  It’s right after Abraham says he’ll take whichever side that Lot doesn’t want that God makes this amazing promise: “Lift up your eyes from where you are and look north and south, east and west. 15 All the land that you see I will give to you and your offspring ^[a] forever. 16 I will make your offspring like the dust of the earth, so that if anyone could count the dust, then your offspring could be counted. 17 Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.”

(Lot, meanwhile, gets himself entangled in all sorts of nastiness and ends up needing to be rescued by Abraham, more than once.)

We begin life being challenged by God to live in a new way, to seperate ourselves from all that we’ve ever known.  We enter that stage when we’re tempted by career aspirations to forsake the important things, just like Abraham must have been.

As we get older we have kids.  But really, that’s all God.  and God says “Do you trust me?  Do you trust me enough to turn over the one you love the most?  Will you turn him over to me, even if you think your child will die?”

Abraham also faced that question.

And as he gave the right answers, God called him out deeper and deeper.   The connection between Abraham and God deepened.  Consider that whole circumcision thing.   There’s plenty of symbolic stuff that we can focus on.  But I think it’s a mistake to forget the literal aspects of this act: God says “Do you trust me enough to cut off a portion of yourself in the most sensetive area of your entire body?”  (My answer, by the way, would likely be “No.”)

Even into the end of Abraham’s life, we still see him modeling this.  There’s a sort-of wierd passage after Sarah’s death.  He’s insisting on paying the full and appropriate price for a spot to bury her in.  I think this can be read in the same light of the whole thing with Lot, all those years before.  Abraham could have used his position as the leader to say “I’m going to pick the direction that I want.” and he could have used his grief to have those around him hand over a place to bury his wife.  But in the middle of his mourning, he doesn’t forget to act with character.

There’s probably so much more to be said here.  (Isn’t there always with scripture?)  If I manage to accumulate a whole post’s worth, maybe I’ll add some more.