Reading: Genesis 12:1-4a
“YHWH
said to Avram: Go-you-forth from your land, from your kindred … to the land
that I will let you see.” Genesis 12:1( Schocken Bible, Everett Fox,
tr.)
Righteousness.
What was the personal benefit to Abram that he left his
land, the land of his father, the land of his ancestors to step out on the
journey God offered him? What would Abram get out of the journey he was about
to undertake at God’s bidding at the age of 75? Abram was leaving all that he
knew, giving up rights to the land of his birth. All we are told is that Abram
was given a promise by God. Abram trusted and accepted the summons and left for
Canaan.
Martin Luther wrote in Two
Kinds of Righteousness, that the first righteousness is a gift of God
“instilled in us without our works by grace alone,” from which develops our “proper”
righteousness, a life lived “soberly with self, justly with neighbor, devoutly
toward God.… Therefore, through the first righteousness arises the voice of the
bridegroom who says to the soul, ‘I am yours,’ but through the second comes the
voice of the bride who answers, ‘I am yours.”
So Abram went.
O God of love and
promise, may we always answer, “I am yours.”. Amen
- Plant a bulb in a pot. Begin
to water it; place it in a sunny window.
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