Thursday, March 9, 2017

Thursday, March 9, 2017

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.
• Listen to the soprano (Soul) and bass (Christ) duet , "Mein Freund ist mein"from J. S. Bach Cantata 140        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQHXIGC07fU