Abuse
Some things are just bad ideas, no matter how well they turn out.
Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, 'I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, "This is his wife"; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.' When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh's house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels. - Genesis 12:10-16
So many things bother me about today's reading from Genesis.
Abram, who will become the father of three faiths, gives his wife to Pharaoh and is paid handsomely for her. How is that not a bad thing?
He convinces her to pretend she is his sister so she will live and he will not die. But she would live anyway, even if she told the truth. If Pharaoh wanted her, he would just kill Abram and take her.
Or so Abram might think. Tell me this is not all about him trying to save his own skin, and using a woman, his wife, to do it.
As it turns out, Pharaoh gives him everything and lets them leave, telling Abram he would not have taken Sarai as his wife had he known they were married.
So, Abram looks like a fool here, and he gets away with abusing the relationship he has with his wife in the process.
So, tell me, why would God choose him to be the father of many nations?
Maybe the message here is one of redemption. At some point Abram will put his own wants and needs aside for God, showing his true faithfulness, becoming the first to believe in the one true God.
And God, in choosing someone who makes mistakes, may be telling all of us we have a chance to turn around and be great in our faith.
We don't have to be perfect to be offered opportunities to do God's work. In fact, we can never be perfect. We can only be what we are.
But I would have liked Abram to be better when it comes to how he treated the women in his life. Maybe that is something else we can take away from this story.
It may just be a mirror to our own souls.
More to come...