Loving Jesus, Son of Abraham

 

An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Matthew 1:1

I love how Jesus is immediately identified with Abraham. To reach back into the ages and touch the weathered hand of Abraham is to contact the heartbeat of humanity. It could have been any old man in any desert who heard what Abraham heard that night. Through you all nations will be blessed. Why Abraham? Why anyone? We are all part of Abraham’s story, for in Abraham, the story of God intersects the story of us. Eternity steps into time, into the flapping tents of a homeless nomad on a lonely desert night, one of those nights when the stars are spilled like sand across the vastness of the firmament and as he stares, he hears the whisper, So shall your descendants be.

The brightest star, the Morning Star, in that overwhelming sky, must have been Jesus. Looking down into the wondering eyes of the man outside the tent in the middle of the wasteland, he must have smiled. Hi, Father Abraham.

But oh, the years between the dreaming and the coming true… the tragedies, the children dying in the wilderness.

 

Today the sons of Abraham are at war.

Eyes that gazed in wonder at God’s promises now glare hatefully at the fulfillment in each other.

And in our midst stands Jesus, son of Abraham, saying, Before Abraham was, I AM. Before you would even recognize the story, I was telling it. How many lonely nights had I stood alone weeping in that desert before you shuffled over the horizon and chanced to hear my voice?

Jesus, I hear you. May all of us hear you, beyond the gunfire, beyond the rhetoric. May all of us see you, still weeping in the desert, still staring through the eyes of your heartbroken brothers, the sons of Abraham.

REMEMBER TO PRAY FOR THE MODERN-DAY DESCENDANTS OF ABRAHAM,

THE PEOPLES OF THE MIDDLES EAST,

THAT THEY MAY RECOGNIZE JESUS IN THEIR MIDST.