Foolishness and Redemption on the Small Scale

Reflection on Genesis 14:1-16
by Josh McPaul

Right now I am a little obsessed with a TV show called Srugim. It's an Israeli 'sitcom' from 2004. It follows a group of four, conservative Jews and their love lives. It could not be a smaller story, but I love it. The lives of these people are real and fraught and entangled with God. It's not the size of the story that matters... the shape of the story is what moves me.

Genesis 14:1-16 is one of those stories I am tempted to skip over. It's like reading an outdated newspaper in a little village in a country far away. The details are so small, so sordid and so disconnected from my life. Yet, these petty bandits posturing as kings and this pitiful hooliganism posturing as war just goes to show how tiny and vulnerable God's people were at this time. Chedorlaomer and his buddies were the big stuff in Abraham's day and their battles threatened to overwhelm the embryonic people of God.

God knows your enemies too. I know, I know... you don't have real enemies. But I know you have obstacles and burdens that would seem ridiculous to a distant descendent, but feel so real and powerful now. I do too. Like Abraham, all of our stories are small.

But what is the shape of this story? We see foolish Lot caught up in the mess of his day. And Abraham who has just seen his nephew make a foolish decision, saddles up with his men to go rescue Lot. Lot doesn't deserve it. Lot got himself in this trouble. Abraham goes to save him because Lot is family.

Our story has the same shape. We have all gotten ourselves into messes we can't get out off. Yet Abraham's descendent, in a small part of the world, on a pitiful tree, came to rescue us, not because we deserved. But because he loved us.