8/9 "Shalom"

The Book of Genesis is largely about choices, right choices and wrong choices. Some people like our universal parents, Adam and Eve, chose to partake of the wrong tree and got everybody into trouble; so much so, that the Son of God eventually had to go through unimaginable torture to rescue us from the wages of sin. But unlike our common ancestral parents other people in the book of beginnings, like Abraham, made good choices that blessed all of mankind. Abraham believed God when the Lord of creation promised him that all the nations would be blessed (Gen. 12:3) if Abraham would leave Ur (in modern day Iraq), hit the road and head for a far country. This week we focus on an episode in Abe’s life which demonstrated his growing confidence in God’s providence as contrasted with his greedy nephew Lot, who also needed to make a choice but blew it and almost got himself and his entire family condemned to a lifetime of slavery if not an early death.

In Genesis 13, we read where Abraham returned to the place in Canaan where God had originally led him and where he had established a place of worship and commemoration of God’s covenantal faithfulness. Prior to that, Abram as he is called early in his walk with the Lord (before his name was changed), makes his own wrong choice by trying his luck in Egypt rather than trusting the Lord for sustenance during a famine in Canaan. Abraham puts himself and his wife Sarai (her name was changed later, too) in harms way but comes out of it “smelling like a rose,” but only because of God’s faithfulness. Do I have to say it? Yes, but for the grace of God there go I down the path of destruction. But having learned his lesson, he has sense enough to return to where he belonged in God’s plan for him and his progeny. But how does Abraham’s nephew, Lot, figure in all of this? Well, Lot seems to have shared in all of his uncle’s blessings because he threw in with Abraham in the latter’s quest for a new land of promise. But Lot was essentially piggy-backing on his uncle’s shoulders and needed to make his own existential decision about where he would live and sustain himself. Lot messed up and later needed his uncle to rescue him. (see Genesis 14)

Because of strife among Abraham’s and Lot’s underlings, Abraham graciously took the initiative to make peace. He gave Lot a choice. Whatever Lot chose Lot and his people could have and Abraham would pitch his tents on land and graze his animals away from where Lot would be settled with his own men and the animals from which he derived his own wealth. In short, Abraham chose the pathway of peace and trust in God’s providence for his well being or shalom, while Lot chose what he thought was the best land for himself and his interests without regard for his uncle’s rightful claim to the best land. Lot also chose to move near a very wicked group of people in the city of Sodom. And we know what happened to them along with their sister city, Gomorrah. But that’s another story. Lot did not choose an unselfish way of making peace but opted for capitalizing on his uncle’s generosity and thus acted outside the boundaries of the covenant that had bonded Lot to Abraham under God. Instead, he became more identified with the fortunes of a people who were headed for annihilation because of their wickedness. The wise person is the person who knows and recognizes where they really belong in God’s scheme of things and does not throw virtue to the wind in a quest for gain and prosperity outside of God’s provision. Read James 3:13-18 and 4:13-17. The wise person chooses God’s shalom.