Lectio Divina from the Jesse Tree
GOD’S COVENANT WITH ABRAHAM – Day 4 🌟
Genesis 12:1-3;18:1-5
“Go forth…, so that you will be a blessing.”
We cannot bless the world with the goodness of God’s promises if we never leave home.
“From your land, your relatives, and from your father’s house.”
So many children desire to remain in their childhood home with their parents these days and in the same town where they grew. This spirit of “going forth” has been suppressed and driven mostly by economics and social pressure to remain childish, not childlike, for what child does not naturally yearn for open lands and fields to run to and through, but in childishness and fear they are taught to cling tightly to their mothers skirt and to stay under the hand of their father’s protection. And yet the Lord commands his disciples to go forth from the safety of their tents in order that the world may be blessed by our presence in it.
Jesus appealed to his Father not to remove his disciples from the world but to equip them to remain in it until he would return. Not because he enjoyed to see his disciples toil but so that the world might be blessed by their work in it. He had compassion on the world.
“Sir, if it please you…”
Abraham walked closely with God. He knew his heart and from this place of intimacy could speak to him as a friend. He demonstrates his willingness to be a blessing for the Lord in the earth when he gets up from the safety and shelter of his tent to seek him out, even “while the day was growing hot”. Unlike his ancestor Adam, who walked with God in the cool of the day, Abraham and his descendants would have to learn how to be a blessing in the heated moments.
“Bowing to the ground” he invites the Lord to stay with him and offers to bring him water to wash his feet and rest with him for a while. A gesture Jesus later takes from his friend, Abraham, to demonstrate to his disciples the way they too should be a blessing in the world.
“Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him.” John 13:14-17
Whereas, God’s covenant with Noah produces a blessing to be fertile, multiply and fill, God’s covenant with Abraham produces a blessing to be in friendship with God and to become ourselves the blessing!
May we too be so moved in the heated days ahead to find ourselves running from the shelter of our lives to be a blessing to others. And like Moses, who “wished that we all would prophesy”, and Abraham, who wished that the Lord would stay and rest with him, may we too find ourselves friends of God, who will look upon our own desires to be a blessing to the world and also say, “Very well, do as you have said.”
Now, “go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit”.
This year’s Advent Meditations are brought to you through the use of the Jesse Tree Journal by the Disciple of Christ – Education in Virtue at OpenLightMedia.com. Visit their site for a copy of the Jesse Tree Advent Journal and begin your own journey to #EncounterHim
