Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Now Lot, who went with Abram, also had flocks and herds and tents, so that the land could not support both of them living together; for their possessions were so great that they could not live together.”
NL Daily Devotion for Saturday, September 14, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I’m doing it again. I’m looking at this through the lens of my modern context, and I’m sighing at the accumulation of wealth as a sign of God’s blessing. Abram and his nephew, Lot, had been nomads together for some time, sojourning side by side “by stages from the Negeb as far as Bethel…between Bethel and Ai.” (v. 3) But they had so much “stuff”—flocks and silver and gold—that the land couldn’t support them. And rather than, you know, give it away and live simply, the solution is that they part company and each go off on his own to continue to accumulate wealth at a respectful (but not acrimonious) distance.
I know this story is about God’s abundance and promise to make Abram a great nation (in which Lot, apparently, has no share?). And I know that without these events (metaphorical though they are) the Israelites would not have become a powerful nation, Judaism would not have been established, Jesus would not have been born under Roman rule, and I would not be here writing this devotion.
And yet.
I have experienced blessing upon blessing in my life, and they are far more often about immaterial things than material. I have experienced God’s action in my life in profound and transformational ways, and they have nothing to do with accumulating wealth. Abundance, as I see it, is about the things of life—relationships, nature, creativity, service—things we can never accumulate so much of that we can’t share space with our fellow human beings. Just sayin’.
How have I experienced God’s abundance in my life?
