"Peace" is harder than it looks!--by Linden Malki

When does "peace" fail?  It can be a very scary situation; often what seems like a good idea has unpredictable results; sometimes better than expected, and sometimes not. We don't usually think of Abraham as being short-sighted, and of course we don't necessarily get the results we expect, but Pastor Matt's telling of Abraham's unexpected consequences remind us of the power of decisions that we make.

The conversation with God over the judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah ended the way God knew it would (of course), but there are some interesting points along the way. One is that the conversation seemed to end with the agreement that the presence of 10 righteous men would have been enough  to save the cities.  At that time, there weren't 10, but  the angels pushed Lot and and his family to leave. (His daughters' future husbands turned down the chance,Lot's wife couldn't resist the temptation to look back; the daughters seem to think they were the last people on earth and took matters into their own hands.) The result was two tribes of people who were trouble for the Israelites over hundreds of years--one of them was the Ammonites that David was fighting at the time of the Uriah incident about 900 years later. And it is tempting to ask questions like "Why was Abraham OK with Lot settling in Sodom?"

The longest lasting side-effect historical side-effect of Abraham's attempt at peacemaking was actually Sarai/Sarah's bright idea. Rather than waiting on God to make them the promised heirs of the land, she talked Abraham into taking action themselves. It seemed easy at the time--babies are little and cute, and Abraham had his son, whom he loved. He also had two women who were no longer able to live in the same tents.  We know the story; Hagar was forced to leave, and was miraculously led to a spring that allowed her and Ishmael to survive, and eventually thrive.  Isaac was the answer they should have waited for, and was Abraham's heir.  (Ishmael did keep in touch; we know that both sons together buried Abraham at Hebron.)  Ishmael had twelve sons, and the next we hear from them is as slave-traders who sold their cousin Joseph in Egypt.  They were traders and nomads in the Arabian trading routes, and are said to have become ancestors of the Quaraysh tribe on the Red Sea coast, the tribe of Mohammed. We know that there were Jews and Christians living in that part of the world in the first few centuries of the Christian era; the Christians apparently were mostly from sects that were no longer in touch with the mainstream churches of the Mediterraean population centers, and their theology was affected by writings that were rejected by most of the larger communions.  This is the religious enviroment that Mohammed grew up in, and we find traces of Jewish and unorthodox Christian ideas in the Koran. Ishmael is revered as the ancestor of the Arabs, and there are parts of the Islamic pilgrimage that are based on early stories of Ishmael and Hagar.

History is more powerful than we realize, both good and bad. Things echo down through the years that we're often not aware of.  There are several ideas that live on from Abraham's time that are still part of the Jewish heritage today: one is that 10 men comprise a "minyan" that is the minimum that can meet for prayer and worship; that 10 rightous men in a community protect it from evil, and God's  promise in Genesis 12:3 "I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse, and all peoples on earth will be blessed in you."  We who have been grafted on to this heritage need to appreciate the intercession that God has made through millenia for all of His people.