The Park Forum

“Man surrenders object after object, and finally himself, to Nature in return for power.”

― C.S. Lewis

Scripture: Genesis 11.4

Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Reflection: Spaces of Renewal

The Park Forum

The story of Babel is a story of technology—humankind’s use of every available asset to propel itself further on the quest for more. It is no different today: we use technology to extend our strength, expand our possibilities for mating, and enrich our knowledge. And we give up so much in exchange for these delights.

Our smart devices track our location and listen to our conversations—all in an effort to target us with more accurate advertising. We risk the messiness of face-to-face conversations less often—texting and email give us time to think through each reply. Even praying for and evaluating needs has been quickly replaced by one-click shopping and within-the-hour deliveries.

The ancients grasped for all they could obtain—it is no different than us today. Yet it is important to find the cadence of this section of Genesis: man attempts to be his own god through technology, God judges mankind’s idolatry, then God blesses humankind (Genesis 12). Their name would be known—but not by their own power.

God’s calling to his people was not to a life of technological fasting and spiritual duties. Instead it was to form a community whose identity is renewed daily in his grace. For us today these spaces of renewal are what our personal technology robs from us first. In The Spirit of the Disciplines Dallas Willard writes:

Bible study, prayer and church attendance, among the most commonly prescribed activities in Christian circles, generally have little effect for soul transformation, as is obvious to any observer. If all the people doing them were transformed to health and righteousness by it, the world would be vastly changed.

Their failure to bring about the change is precisely because the body and soul are so exhausted, fragmented and conflicted that the prescribed activities cannot be appropriately engaged, and by and large degenerate into legalistic and ineffectual rituals. Lengthy solitude and silence, including rest, can make them very powerful.

But we must choose these disciplines. God will, generally speaking, not compete for our attention. If we will not withdraw from the things that obsess and exhaust us into solitude and silence, he will usually leave us to our own devices.

The Request for Presence

Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; let those who love your salvation say forever, “Great is the Lord!”

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 10-11 (Listen – 7:16)
Matthew 10 (Listen – 5:07)

“Unless You abide with me, all things that seem to bring peace and happiness are as nothing, for they cannot bestow true happiness. You alone are the End of all good things, the fullness of life, the depth of wisdom; and the greatest comfort of Your servants is to trust in You above all else.”

― Thomas à Kempis

Scripture: Genesis 9.8-9

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him, “Behold, I establish my covenant with you and your offspring after you.”

Reflection: Bargaining with God

The Park Forum

“Superstitious people do not believe in God,” reflects André Aciman in The Good Book. “They believe in something far more powerful but also far more mischievous and insidious.” And so many go through life haggling for a better deal: more comfort and provision in exchange for dedication—or the healing of another in exchange for personal misfortune. Aciman continues:

The human mind believes—but always provisionally—that in the course of a lifetime it can negotiate a couple of good deals with Providence. There may be a price to pay and there are no freebies, since Providence always exacts something in return, which is why we offer sacrifices and make sacrifices. I will give this up if you give me that. I will forfeit going after that, if in return I can continue to hold on to this.

But because the logic of divine Providence is not only ironic but frequently counterintuitive, we also know that it may be unreliable enough to bring about something other than what was asked for. You didn’t ask well. Or You asked too much. Or You asked too soon. Or You didn’t think through your request. You turn to me only when you need me. Be happy you got what you got. Now off with you before I change my mind and take back the little I doled out and give it to someone else, preferably your rival.

Aciman denies there is truly a divine being “out there,” noting, “We contend and tussle with him as we tussle and contend with ourselves.” Our own brokenness, projected onto God’s character. But this is not the God we meet in the Scriptures.

There is no better deal to negotiate because we have already been promised everything. There is no other sacrifice to make because the greatest sacrifice has already been made. Divine grace sits before us—any attempt to bargain for it is an attempt to assert ourselves over God.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week

Grant that all who are baptized into his name may keep the covenant they have made, and boldly confess him as Lord and Savior; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.

— From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 9 (Listen – 3:50)
Matthew 9 (Listen – 4:56)

“Jesus does not impose intolerable restrictions on his disciples, he does not forbid them to look at anything, but bids them look on him. If they do that he knows that their gaze will always be pure.”

― Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Scripture: Genesis 5.24

Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.

Reflection: Faithful Steps
The Park Forum

If you’re reading Genesis from the beginning, the first place you come across the Hebrew word for walk is on the day that sin entered the world. “And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day.” Guilt and shame were assaulting the hearts of humankind; “and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.”

Then came the first family’s attempts to find themselves outside of God—the fruit of which was envy and murder. Then generations of life, sin, and death. Then Enoch. The man was great because he walked with God.

Walking with God is such a negligible accomplishment in the eyes of men. Though pages of Scripture are dedicated to the warriors and kings—even the servants—only a handful of verses are given to Enoch. They all echo what we read in Genesis: he walked.

We must imagine his life was as tumultuous as any—filled as much with joy, glory, and success as it was with disappointment, frustration, and personal failure. Yet he walked with God.

Perhaps a modern contemporary of Enoch was Elisabeth Elliot, the missionary and author who walked steadily and faithfully throughout her life. Reflecting on the invitation to walk with God, even through the difficulties of life, Elliot concludes:

The chance for each one of us to “die” is always given. The day’s happenings are presented to us by the God who conceived the intricate shape of the cranesbill’s seed. With exquisite delicacy he prepares us in mysterious ways and teaches us how to receive our daily deaths, whether they be small ones such as the cutting remark, the social slight, the unwelcome task, or the coming to pass of our worst fears.

The disorders and sorrows in my own life, whether attributable solely to my own fault, solely to someone else’s, perhaps to a mixture of both, or to neither, have given me the chance to learn a little more each time of the meaning of the cross.

What can I do with the sins of others? Nothing but what I can do with my own—and what Jesus did with all of them—take them to the cross. Put them down at the foot and let them stay there. The cross has become my home, my rest, my shelter, my refuge.

The Call to Prayer

Search for the Lord and his strength; continually seek his face. — Psalm 105.4

— From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 6 (Listen – 2:48)
Matthew 6 (Listen – 4:35)

This Weekend’s Readings
Genesis 7 (Listen – 3:18) Matthew 7 (Listen – 3:31)
Genesis 8 (Listen – 3:06) Matthew 8 (Listen – 4:09)

“We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent.”

― Bryan Stevenson

Scripture: 1 John 3.12, 16

We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous…. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Reflection: The Essence of Sin
The Park Forum

We seat our identity in so many places—career, fashion, vacation—but in the Biblical world the seat of identity is the family, and the chief expression is found in a person’s name. In Genesis 4 we meet two brothers: Cain—which means successful and productive—and Abel—which means worthless or nobody.

In an agrarian world Cain, who worked the ground, was fruitful; but Abel, who hunted, was not. (Archaeologists estimate nearly 90% of the human diet during this time period was fruits and vegetables.)

When it came time to worship, God—in a stunning reversal—accepted Abel’s sacrifice, but rejected Cain’s. Reflecting on the elder brother’s explosive response, pastor Timothy Keller explains:

When God favored Abel, Cain either had to readjust his identity or eliminate Abel. When Cain is confronted with God’s measure of what truly matters and what is truly great, he has to exclude both God and Abel because his premise goes like this. “If Abel is who God regards him to be, then I am not who I understand myself to be.”

The power of sin, [Miroslav Volf says], rests not so much on an insuppressible urge of violence than on the reasoning of the perverted self which insists on maintaining its own false identity. Of course, these reasons are only persuasive to the perverted self, not to anyone else. That is why Cain keeps silent when God asks, “Why are you angry?”

The essence of sin is to build an identity outside of God. The essence of sin is to say, “What makes me cool, what makes me okay, what makes me significant is I’m living up to what my parents say; I am a successful farmer. I am this. I am that. That means I’m a somebody, and he is a nobody.” When God shows he has a completely different value system, Cain goes berserk.

Finding ourselves in Cain’s place is not about the symptoms of our sin, but discovering the root cause is the same—our identity rests in our own power, accomplishments, and dreams.

The Request for Presence

Save me, O God, for the waters have risen up to my neck. — Psalm 69.1

— From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 5 (Listen – 3:18)
Matthew 5 (Listen – 6:03)

“It would seem that unless we see through and beyond the physical, we shall not even see the physical as we ought to see it: as the very vehicle for the glory of God.”

― Elisabeth Elliot

Scripture: Genesis 2.25 – 3.1

And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.

Reflection: Wounded Nobility
The Park Forum

The opening of the book of Genesis, like all ancient creation narratives, is designed to help us understand ourselves and the world we live in—it is the tuning pitch before the chorus of Scripture resounds with the story of God’s everlasting love.

The first narrative of evil in Scripture is meant to shatter the beauty of the two poems that precede it. Observing the stark contrast between the second and third chapter of Genesis, journalist Avi Steinberg comments:

The Hebrew word for naked is ’arum. In the very next sentence, almost as a non sequitur, we are introduced to a new character: “Now the snake was more shrewd (’arum) than all the living-things of the field…” In two consecutive verses, this word ’arum is used to describe the main characters—but the meaning of this single uncommon word is completely different in each verse, indeed opposite.

The humans are naked, ’arum; everything, including their motives, is out in the open. They are guileless. But in the next sentence, in connection with the Snake, the word ’arum means shrewd, sly; the Snake is a trickster who keeps his intentions hidden….

Whoever he might be, the Snake is something more than a snake. He’s a complex character, torn by mixed motives, who seeks justice while also indulging in petty ambition; he is tormented and ultimately undone by his wounded nobility.

The creation account reveals that we share in the beauty of what it means to be created in the image of God—yet we also carry the burden of “wounded nobility” and all its discontents.

Augustine prayed, “our hearts are restless till they find their rest in thee.” This is surely the result of what we read in the third chapter of Genesis—what if it were also our longing each day?

The Call to Prayer

But I will call upon God, and the Lord will deliver me. In the evening, in the morning, and at noonday, I will complain and lament, he will bring me safely back… God, who is enthroned of old, will hear me. — Psalm 55.17ff

— From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Autumn and Wintertime by Phylis Tickle

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 4 (Listen – 3:54)
Matthew 4 (Listen – 3:09)