Lech Lecha - Go forth, yourself.

Note: Due to a rather hectic start to this year, I am slightly behind on these postings. To remedy this, I will increase this week's postings in order to get back on schedule. Thank you.

First Reading:
Genesis 12:1-13:4

In our first reading from Parsha Lech Lecha, we learn more about Abram who eventually becomes Abraham, the patriarch of the children of Israel. Genesis 12 opens with G-d telling Abram to leave his home and travel to another country, and that G-d will bless him and make him a great nation. Abram does obey G-d and travels to a distant land. Now remember from our past readings, that Abram's father Terah worshiped other gods, as did the people around him. Despite this, when G-d speaks to Abram and asks him to uproot his entire family and move to a distant land, Abram listens and obeys. So just as in the case of Noah, we see one man with faith in G-d so great that he is willing to go to extraordinary lengths to follow Him.

Abram travels to the land that G-d promised to give to his descendants and is in communication with G-d, building an altar to Him along the way (Gen. 12:8). But Abram is still human. So when he enters Egypt and realizes that the local men might want his beautiful wife Sarai for themselves, and might even kill him to get her, he tells Sarai to say that she is his sister. This is actually a half-truth, as they shared the same father but had different mothers. Yet as we shall soon see, a half-truth is still an untruth in G-d's eyes.

It turns out that none other than Pharaoh himself sees Sarai and takes her for his own (Gen. 12:15). But while Pharaoh lavishes gifts on Abram, whom he thinks is Sarai's brother, G-d strikes the household of Pharaoh with plagues until the truth is found out and Sarai is returned to Abram. Abram may have seen nothing wrong in passing off Sarai as his sister. After all, she was technically his half-sister. But G-d saw things differently. What Abram saw as a half-truth, G-d saw as a lie. And while Abram was willing to trust G-d enough to travel to a distant land, he didn't trust G-d quite enough to protect him on the way there.

How different are we from Abram? Don't we often rationalize our sin, telling ourselves that it's really not that bad although our conscience tells us otherwise? And how often do we claim to trust G-d for big things in our lives, asking Him for help or things we need, but then we try to take care of the details ourselves without even consulting Him?

I am often guilty of this. And when I am, I need to follow Abram's example in Genesis 13:4, where he returned to the altar he had built (in Gen. 12:8) and "called on the name of the L-rd."

My prayer today is that I will be made aware when I am trying to achieve things through my own manipulations and return to the altar and surrender those things to the L-rd.

Next: Genesis 13:5-14:20