Abraham, Noah... and us
This was originally written for the church newsletter--the congregation is focusing upon stewardship during Lent.
One becomes aware, once one begins attempting to inculcate faith in the heart of a small person, that many of our best-known Bible stories are, well… a little weird. Make that profoundly disturbing. My awareness of this might be heightened by the fact that the other half did not grow up in a church-going household and I am imagining what’s going through his head in the other room as I read these things, but even so:
“Abraham took his son Isaac out into the wilderness, and he tied him up, and he took a knife… and then God spoke to him, and he found a ram stuck in the bushes, and he killed that instead as a sacrifice to God.”
Excuse me?
“The whole world was flooded and every living thing drowned, but Noah and his family and two of every animal went into the ark, so they were saved.”
Umm…
And then, of course, there’s that whole bloody-scourging-and-crucifixion sequence that we retell every spring.
The funny thing is, I learned these stories as a child, and I do not feel at all scarred by this early knowledge that bad things can happen and enormous sacrifice can be required. Fortunately, I learned something else along the way—something I hope is getting through to the almost-6-year-old, as well.
The world can be a brutal place. We are not perfect, and neither is anybody else. But—and it’s a very important but—we are loved. There is a bigger picture out there, one larger than we can understand. We have a place in a scheme far beyond our imagining. We belong, not to ourselves, but to the God who gave Isaac a reprieve and sent Jesus… for us.
Significance abounds in the stories so briefly related above, but one among many elements present here is the reality that we belong to the God who created this bigger picture, this larger scheme. As the apostle Paul put it in his second letter to the church at Corinth, “we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Cor. 4:7). We are God’s tools, God’s hands and feet, in a world we will never fully understand—and that’s okay. God will take care of his creation, one way or another, and one of the ways he does so is through us.
The figures in these stories understood that they belonged, not to themselves, but to the One who created them. They lived in this trust—and they were good stewards of the lives with which they had been entrusted. How might we do the same?
We’ve been granted dominion over the natural world… a trust granted to us. We’d better take care of it.
We’ve been granted these “jars of clay.” We’d do well to remember that and take care of them well.
We’ve been granted resources, from money to time to talents. They aren’t ours; they’re part of the clay from which we are made. We’re charged, then, to use them in ways that further the kingdom of God on earth.
We have roles to play in this world, just like Abraham and Noah. Just like these two, we cannot see the complete picture. But just as they did, we have the opportunity to make choices that will enable us to live lives of faith, leaving our world a better place than we found it. This we are all called to do.
One becomes aware, once one begins attempting to inculcate faith in the heart of a small person, that many of our best-known Bible stories are, well… a little weird. Make that profoundly disturbing. My awareness of this might be heightened by the fact that the other half did not grow up in a church-going household and I am imagining what’s going through his head in the other room as I read these things, but even so:
“Abraham took his son Isaac out into the wilderness, and he tied him up, and he took a knife… and then God spoke to him, and he found a ram stuck in the bushes, and he killed that instead as a sacrifice to God.”
Excuse me?
“The whole world was flooded and every living thing drowned, but Noah and his family and two of every animal went into the ark, so they were saved.”
Umm…
And then, of course, there’s that whole bloody-scourging-and-crucifixion sequence that we retell every spring.
The funny thing is, I learned these stories as a child, and I do not feel at all scarred by this early knowledge that bad things can happen and enormous sacrifice can be required. Fortunately, I learned something else along the way—something I hope is getting through to the almost-6-year-old, as well.
The world can be a brutal place. We are not perfect, and neither is anybody else. But—and it’s a very important but—we are loved. There is a bigger picture out there, one larger than we can understand. We have a place in a scheme far beyond our imagining. We belong, not to ourselves, but to the God who gave Isaac a reprieve and sent Jesus… for us.
Significance abounds in the stories so briefly related above, but one among many elements present here is the reality that we belong to the God who created this bigger picture, this larger scheme. As the apostle Paul put it in his second letter to the church at Corinth, “we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us” (2 Cor. 4:7). We are God’s tools, God’s hands and feet, in a world we will never fully understand—and that’s okay. God will take care of his creation, one way or another, and one of the ways he does so is through us.
The figures in these stories understood that they belonged, not to themselves, but to the One who created them. They lived in this trust—and they were good stewards of the lives with which they had been entrusted. How might we do the same?
We’ve been granted dominion over the natural world… a trust granted to us. We’d better take care of it.
We’ve been granted these “jars of clay.” We’d do well to remember that and take care of them well.
We’ve been granted resources, from money to time to talents. They aren’t ours; they’re part of the clay from which we are made. We’re charged, then, to use them in ways that further the kingdom of God on earth.
We have roles to play in this world, just like Abraham and Noah. Just like these two, we cannot see the complete picture. But just as they did, we have the opportunity to make choices that will enable us to live lives of faith, leaving our world a better place than we found it. This we are all called to do.
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