Tag: Matthew

“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)

“The grand premise of religion is that man is able to surpass himself; that man who is part of this world may enter into relationship with him who is greater than the world.”

― Abraham Joshua Heschel

Scripture: Genesis 2:15

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Reflection: Laboring for Christ
By Augustine of Hippo (c. 420 C.E.)

We were made, it is true, by the hands of Truth, but because of sin we were cast forth upon days of vanity. “We were made after the image of God,” but we disfigured it by sinful transgression.

Man walks in the image of truth, and will be disquieted in the counsel of vanity. He is disquieted, he heaps up treasure, he thinks, and toils, and is kept awake by anxiety. All day long you are harassed by labor, all night agitated by fear.

That your coffer may be filled with money, you soul is in a fever of anxiety. Why are you preparing a strong defense for your riches? Hear the Power of God, nothing is more strong than he. Why are you preparing wise counsel to protect your riches? Hear the Wisdom of God, nothing is more wise than he.

“Lay not up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust doth destroy, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where no thief approaches, nor moth corrupts: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

I am giving you counsel for keeping, not for losing. The enemy has broken up our house; but could he break heaven open? Though he is the Lord, and does not need our goods—yet that we might do something even for Him—he has granted to be hungry through his poor.

“I was hungry,” he says, “and you gave me food.” Lord, when saw we you hungry? “Forasmuch as you did it to one of the least of mine, you did it to me.” To be brief then, let men hear, and consider as they ought, how great a merit it is to have fed Christ when He hungers.

— Excerpted, and language updated, from Saint Augustin: Sermon on the Mount, Harmony of the Gospels, Homilies on the Gospels.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons

Our Help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. — Psalm 124.8

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 3 (Listen – 4:14)
Matthew 3 (Listen – 2:17)

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself—be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself—by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love—the more human he is.”

— Viktor Frankl

Scripture: Genesis 1.27

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

Reflection: A New Look at Creation
The Park Forum

Ancient creation narratives have fallen out of favor in the modern world. Yet even a cursory glance at history reveals a link between a civilization’s understanding of creation and how its people live in the world.

The Ancient Egyptians believed men and women were projected out of the god Atum’s nose as he sneezed over the earth—and their understanding of human rights was a derivative of their understanding of creation. Accounts of ancient Egyptian life document near-perpetual war, systematic injustice, and brutal slavery (pyramids don’t build themselves).

In our own culture, the foundation of human rights is drawn directly from the pages of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. If humanity were created by chance, as many modern creation accounts hold, what justification is there for individual rights?

In The Idea of Human Rights, Yale law professor Michael Perry concludes, “There is, finally, no intelligible (much less persuasive) secular version of the conviction that every human being is sacred; the only intelligible versions are religious.” The Christian creation narrative teaches that each human being is made in the image of God, and is therefore valuable.

In the Christian creation account we also see:

• Work has meaning.
• Rest has transcendent purpose.
• God is both powerful (Genesis 1) and personal (Genesis 2).
• Sin has a definition beyond moralism .
• Brokenness and pain have an explanation.

Genesis’ picture of a world untouched by evil, combines with Christ’s renewal of all things in a world scarred by evil, to give us hope that cannot be taken. A renewed understanding of the Christian creation account not only answers our world’s most difficult questions—like human rights—it reorients our own lives in ways which give us hope, purpose, and joy through the Creator Himself.

The Prayer Appointed for the Week

O God, who wonderfully created, and yet more wonderfully restored, the dignity of human nature: Grant that we may share the divine life of him who humbled himself to share our humanity, your Son, Jesus Christ.

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Reading
Genesis 2 (Listen – 3:42)
Matthew 2 (Listen – 3:18)