Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“These are the descendants of Shem…
When Terah had lived seventy years, he became the father of Abram, Nahor, and Haran.”
NL Daily Devotion for Friday, September 18, 2026
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
The stage is now set. We’ve come a long way—from creation, to Adam and Eve’s disobedience and expulsion from the garden, to the first murder, the peopling of the earth with demigods, to evil overtaking creation, to the complete destruction of the earth except for Noah’s family, to the repopulation of the earth by Noah’s descendants, to their scattering through the world into entirely different nations and peoples. And now we come down to Abram, and a new chapter is set to begin.
All of Genesis has been leading us to this point. The point at which one man, one family, finally gets it right—well, sort of. Yeah, okay, in a lot of ways not at all. But at least the point at which maybe God throws up his hands and says, “Yeah, human beings are never at any time going to live up to my expectations, so I’m just going to have to put up with whatever flawed materials they give me to work with in order to try to get the message across that I love all of creation and will stop at nothing to make that love clear.” No more kicking people out of the garden, no more floods, no more scattering people because of their pride. For the rest of Genesis, the focus will be on this one family, full of rascals, scoundrels, liars, cheaters, thieves, attempted murderers, and more, and how their dysfunction eventually landed them in Egypt, where the next chapter begins.
The theme of the whole story seems to be that God absolutely loves everything that God created, including and perhaps especially human beings, in spite of the fact that we absolutely cannot manage to do what we were created to do, which is to love everything that God created as much as God does, and nurture it accordingly. I’m not sure if I find that depressing (like, will we ever get it? Are we even capable?) or beautiful (even if we don’t, God still never gives up on us). Honestly it depends on the day.
Do I believe humanity is capable of living in harmony and mutual love with all of Creation? Why or why not?
