The first eleven chapters of Genesis tell of God's gifts to us humans and what we do with them and how God responds.
In the beginning, God gave us a garden, companionship, and food. God said not to do this one thing, but that's what we did. God sent them out of the garden but out there they were going to be able to obtain food and to have families. Moreover, God replaced their fig leaf loincloths with fur coats.
Next, as we learned to grow crops and tend sheep, jealousy and violence erupted. God responded by protecting the malefactor from the retribution that we might assert that he had deserved.
Families grew and spread out, but so did the wickedness--to the extent that the Lord regretted even having populated the earth anyway.
But, instead of wiping out the human race entirely, God chose the moral man to begin the project anew. This worked for a while. Noah's son's families expanded and spread out into many lands. They began to be prideful of their accomplishments. They erected a tower with its top in the sky to make a name for themselves. God scattered them over the earth.
Then, in Chapter 12, God once again reached out, choosing Abraham to start things over, once more, "I will bless you, and in you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed." Abraham's predecessors had done it wrong, but he was to do it right.
Abraham had some work to do, "Go to the place that I will show you."
For our Lenten journey, we can remember and celebrate Abraham's call and his response. And we can metaphorize it, to go where the Lord is showing us, to accept the Lord's blessing, and to do what the Lord commands.
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