“In our family we share!”
That’s the daily diatribe you hear around our house these days. Living with siblings can be an amazing and frustrating experience. As a parent, I am constantly confronted with the fact that children love to keep things for themselves. It is such a funny thing to see my 3 year old try to hold all her favorite toys in her lap to keep her brother and sisters from being able to play with them. And she has so many little trinkets that are her priceless possessions that she can’t possibly play with them all at once. But that doesn’t keep her from denying her siblings the joy of playing with her toys. The other day we were looking at a house and the power was out. So I handed a flashlight to my son so he could explore the house with his two sisters. I could hear them as they ran through the house, “let me hold the flashlight, shine it over there.” “Let me see it!” “Mom, Josiah’s hogging the flashlight!” “Abigail, stop it!” “Let me see it!” I later found out that my son, Josiah, was only shining the light on what he was interested in, and kept leaving his sisters in the dark.
"I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you;
I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing.
…and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you." (Gen 12:2-3)
God makes himself known to Abraham, and promises to bless him if he chose to follow God and walk in his ways. And Abraham did just that. And God followed through on his promise to bless him and the nation that grew out of Abraham’s family. And once they got into the land God had promised them, the blessing kept flowing. Eventually, they became one of the most powerful nations in the ancient world. Things just couldn’t seem to get any better for the wealthy nation of
And when the promised deliverer showed up on the scene he wasn’t too happy about how they were hoarding the blessings. They were enslaving the other nations around them. The poor and the widows were being ignored. People were being denied justice. They were keeping the light to themselves. And so God allowed them to be overrun by invading nations and they were carried off into slavery.
I have been learning recently about the key statement of the Lutheran church. It looks like this:
God is always moving down. It is simple and profound. We achieve nothing by our won effort. But as I have studied it I wonder if something is missing. But maybe it would better be expressed this way:
God is always moving down, but he still wants all nations to be blessed through his people. This also expresses the great commandment, “love God with everything you’ve got, and your neighbor as yourself.”
How intentional are we about allowing God to bless others through us?
Do we tend to hoard our toys in our lap?
Do we keep the light to ourselves?
Are we guilty of hiding away in our building?
What do you think?
