Today’s Scripture Reading (May 21, 2018): Genesis 10
It might be the curse of contemporary society
that we are separated from our origins.
Sometimes the separation is voluntary, but it can be forced. A couple of years
ago I had a conversation with a friend who was forced from his place of origin
by war and political unrest. He had come to North America, along with Mom and
Dad and several brothers, to find a place of peace where they could begin to
rebuild their lives. Admittedly, they carried pieces of the land of their
origin with them, but increasingly seemed to find that they belonged nowhere;
neither in their place of origin nor their
newly adopted world. I was surprised to learn that Mom and Dad had plans to
move back home at some time in the future. But I also questioned whether it
would happen. As the kids grew up, established roots and began to have
children, this would become their land of origin in a way that it would never
be for mom and dad. The question that would seem to remain is which pull is
more significant; the desire to return to the land of your beginnings, or the
pull that is created with children, and
soon grandchildren who know little or nothing of, and have no connection with, the
land “back home.” My guess is that the pull of
descendants will top that of history and a place of origin. The love
that we have for our children is often stronger than the pull of history will ever be able to match.
The Bible contains two origin stories. The
first is that of Adam and Eve. It is a story of a Garden, a mandate by a
creator, the first sin, which created the first gap between God and his
creation, the first child and the first murder. But this origin story seemed
doomed to fail almost from the beginning. Adam and Eve are kicked out of the
Garden and forced into a harder life than they had experienced up to this point. After the first murder, life got
even harder. Eventually, the righteous were apparently few and evil reigned in
the world. This is the world that gave
birth to Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth.
Like my friends who were forced to run from the land of their origin by
war and political unrest, the evil of the world forced Noah and his family into
the role of immigrants. They ran from their place of origin, in this case in an
Ark, and were forced into a new life and a new existence - and the necessity of a second origin story.
Genesis simply reminds us that is from this place, and not from the first
origin story, that we descend. It is the children of Noah that have populated
the earth.
It is also the second origin story that
contains the greatest point of connection for contemporary society. We do not
know anything about perfect Gardens and a land without sin. We are all immigrants in a
strange land. Adam and Eve may have walked with God, along with Enoch and few
others in the first origin story, but Noah and his sons were forever separated
from that God by both evil and a flood. Like us, they did not know or live in
the land of their origin. That had been stolen
away from them. Their experiences in an evil world had damaged them from the
very beginning. And they had no connection with their God; they stood, like us,
in need of a revelation.
Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 1
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