Devotionals

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Garden of Jehovah

… the men rose from there and looked toward Sodom …
Gen. 18:1


I can’t begin to imagine what was going through the minds of the LORD and the two men with Him as they rose from Abraham’s hospitality, and looked toward Sodom. Their countenances had to have changed; their visage now laboring under the solemnity of their knowing, a stark gamut of emotions leaving deep etchings of the soul. And their eyes … I don’t think I would have wanted to look into their eyes. One moment, promise-filled; now, overflowing with a haunting vision of what must be.

The pathos in their gaze, in the LORD’s voice, surely struck an apprehensive note in Abraham. Was he holding to the words still hanging in the air, Is there anything too hard for the LORD before next the LORD spoke? Did the grace of its promise give birth to Abraham’s intercession for a place in which he had no part?

I can only imagine. But when the four stood looking toward Sodom, clay eyes fell upon a valley overflowing with blessing’s abundance, a valley like unto the garden of Jehovah. The LORD, too, beheld the richness of His blessing, yet from out of blessings’ midst arose a cry making the very heavens tremble.

A gift claimed, twisted, and now birthing such decadent fruit an outcry filled heaven’s ears, and the Blessings Giver came, letting man know He saw.

But sin knows no shame … heeds no warning. Undetected, unaddressed, its arrogance builds kingdoms utterly deplete of God.

Sodoms and Gamorrahs rise from blessings claimed by and permeated with self, filling the earth with a stench so alien the very blessing becomes corrupted … and Almighty God, cloaked in Grace, must wield Righteousness’ rod.

How much of this Abraham knew remains ground to ponder. How much I understand shows itself in my own attitude and recognition of the showers of blessing that fall upon my life everyday.

Do I take them for granted? Do I see them mine by right of merely existing? Do I pollute them, looking upon the blessings as the product of my own hand, like Cain? In the secret chambers of living, in the shadows where no one sees, do I prostitute myself before the blessing, rather than falling prostrate before the Blessing Giver?

I believe, in a sense, God plants each of us in the Garden of Jehovah. We are His plantings, showered breath-by-breath with His faithful blessing … a creation, made in His image, to honor and glorify God … not self.

Yet reading the message borne in Genesis 18:1 “and looked toward Sodom,” I’m left with an awareness of how easily Sodoms and Gamorrahs rise from ingratitude’s soil. How readily self lays claim to that which is God’s alone, twisting blessing into blight, sending an outcry of pride and all her flagrant children, rather than the fragrance of thanksgiving, heavenward.

Lot chose to pitch his tent at ingratitude’s gates, thinking he could make a difference, could remain untainted. His righteous soul remained in anguish as self-deception’s corrupted kingdom flourished, and all the while self’s tentacles wrapped themselves around the souls of those he loved, skewing their vision ‘til they no longer heeded God’s own deliverance.

Yet Righteous Grace remains written across man’s page, across my page, as a refiner’s fire faithfully brings purification. Painful, but purifying, righteousness spills … until the reflection of God’s image shines like gold within, and the sacrifice of praise sweetens the air filling heaven’s courts with the aroma of truly grateful hearts.





(Reflections on Genesis 18-19)





© 31 January 2006
DeAnna L. Brooks

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