How has the bible reading program been going in your home? Well done if you’ve kept it up daily! If you’re struggling, that’s ok, pick up from the current days reading and steam on ahead! No doubt if you’ve been following the reading plan you will have encountered some interesting narratives so far.

For instance in Genesis 12-26 the narrative of Abraham has revealed so much. Quite often our understanding of biblical characters is drawn from a fairly small portion of scripture. But one of the beauties of the SLE Reading Plan is that we get to see each biblical character for all their positives and their negatives.

Take Abraham as our example. Commonly we remember the glorious promises given to him by God (eg. Gen 12:1-3, 15:18-21) and Abraham’s response of faith – for which he is credited righteousness (eg. Gen 15:6). Now if we only remember these portions of Abraham’s life we might well end up believing that Abraham’s righteousness is something innate to his character.

But his story in Genesis contains much more than these passages. Right after God’s initial promises of blessing in Genesis 12 Abraham heads to Egypt and tries to pass off his wife Sarah as his sister. Right after God’s promises of numerous offspring in Genesis 15, Sarah takes matters into her own hands and has Abraham father a child with her maidservant (the final line in Gen 16:2 has negative echoes of Gen 3:17 where both husbands ‘listen’ the voice of their wives). Right after Abraham’s gutsy conversation and intercession for Sodom and Gomorrah in Genesis 18 he tries to pass off Sarah as his sister…again (ironically something that Isaac, Abraham’s son, does with his wife Rebekah and the same king, Abimelech, in Genesis 26!).

Looking at these parts of Abraham’s story we might be left with the impression that he was a massive failure!

But that is the wonder in the book of Genesis. We are neither to look at Abraham as a towering example of faith, nor are we to simply look at him as a failure. Rather our attention in the book of Genesis is always on the God who so desires to bless this world that he will work through the triumphs and failures of sinful humans to accomplish his purposes. We see this ultimately in the cross of Jesus where God’s use of the sinful purposes of men brought about the glorious purposes of God (cf Acts 2:22-24).

Now what comfort that should bring for us today. Our hope is not that we would become like an Abraham (ie. a man of towering faith), but like Abraham that we would trust in the promises of God!