new church life: september / october 2013
God’s vision for us
is so much greater
than what we see for
ourselves. We tend
to want to stick with
our familiar little ball
of what we know,
but God sees whole
worlds in us.
from this tiny space so that your particles
cool, condense into atoms, form nebulae,
and then suns, worlds and life.”
Ball: “Ah, what? Go out into that cold,
dark ‘outside’ and leave this happy buzzing
place?”
God: “BANG!!!!”
. . . and here we are.
The biblical Tower of Babel story is
similar, in which people are stuck in a tiny
human view of what can be done in creation,
and so God intervenes:
The whole world had one language and a common
speech. . . . . [The people] said, “Come, let us build for ourselves a city, with a tower
that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves and not
be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the
city and the tower that the [people] were building. The Lord said, “If as one people
speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to
do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so
they will not understand each other.” So . . . the Lord scattered them over the face of
the whole earth. (Genesis 11:3-9)
Rather than opening to the possibilities God put into creation, the people
were concentrating collectively on just one expression of their own making,
imagining that this would make their name great. They got stuck. Once this
process started, the Lord saw that it would go just one way – to a lesser and
lesser expression of the possible blessings in creation. And so God introduced
diversity of tongue, and diversity of place.
God also introduced a new tactic to bless creation. He continued to bless
creation in all the ways as before but, in the very next chapter of Genesis, added
a personal, Divine promise and a human agent. The Lord called Abram to the
task:
The Lord had said to Abram, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s
household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation
and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will
bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; And all peoples on
earth will be blessed through you.’”So Abram left, as the Lord had told him . . . set
out for the land of Canaan, and . . . arrived there. (Ibid. 12:1-5)
The Lord followed this call and Abram’s response with additional promises.
After Abram gives Lot the choice of the land, the Lord appears to Abram
and tells him that his offspring will be as numerous “as the dust of the earth,”
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