Writing Straight With Crooked Lines Series

Friday of the 13th Week in Course 2025

Our Scripture from Genesis today recounts the end of Sarah’s life on earth, and the beginning of Abraham’s negotiations with his Hittite neighbors for a plot of land in which to bury her (and later, himself and his heirs). To get a full sense of the negotiations you’ll need to read the fourteen verses skipped in the liturgical text. Suffice it to say that the Hittites offered to let Abraham bury his wife for free in one of their sepulchers. But Abraham, who owned no property in Canaan, wanted full title. So back and forth it went until the chief, Ephron, specifying some land with a cave, offered it as a gift. Abraham said, no, I want to buy it. So Ephron said, “what’s a piece of land worth 400 shekels of silver between friends?” Abraham understood, weighed out the 400 shekels, a very steep price, and had title so he could bury his family there with “no strings attached.”

Another custom then observed was Abraham sending his steward off to find a bride for his son, Isaac. The Scripture gives us a clear picture. Abraham wanted nothing to do with the Canaanites. A bride for Isaac must come from his original kin back in what we now call Iraq. You can read about this search, and the negotiations around it, in chapter 24 of Genesis. What I see in this long set of passages is the care with which God and Abraham surrounded the fulfillment of the promises in the covenant with Abraham. There were no short-cuts. God would have His plan fulfilled in the beginning, through the long history of the Jewish people, and finally when His only-begotten Son, Jesus, became the culmination of that plan in our salvation, our liberation from sin.

The psalmist, reflecting on that long history up through the Davidic kingdom, and perhaps with tongue in cheek, knowing all the stories of Jewish leaders messing up and ignoring the law of God, still sings, “Blessed are they who observe what is right, who do always what is just.” Perhaps he realized just how often God picked up the broken pieces and crafted them into a beautiful mosaic, until the last beautiful mosaic was of Jesus, the longed-for Messiah.

While we are on the topic of writing strait with crooked lines, consider Jesus’s calling of Messiah and other sinners to follow His salvation call. Jesus was the physician who always sought out the morally and legally sick, called them to repentance and new life, and then helped them to reshape their lives into the image of His own Life, by accepting grace. We can all be glad of Christ’s determination to do that, because, as you and I know, we are all sinners in need of Christ’s forgiveness and grace. And He wants to give both to us, freely.