read Genesis 12:1-4a
from the artist | Hannah Garrity (To Be a Blessing, paper lace and pencil over oil paint on paper)
“I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will
be a blessing.” —Genesis 12:2 (NRSV)
As I began to study this text, the motion we are in as a
human species came to mind. God calls Abram. She tasks him with relocating;
she’s not really explicit as to why. Contemporary theologian Norman Wirzba
speaks of our current ability to rely on global positioning systems, or GPS, to
travel without needing to know where we are.4 What do people carry when they
are forced to begin again? Medicine and technology, that’s what people are
carrying across borders right now as they sustain and navigate life through the
journey ahead.
How did Abram begin again? He was wealthy. He was called,
not forced. He traveled with his entourage. In this image, the globe subtly
depicts the route that Abram and his wives, his children, his servants, and his
animals took. The lines of countries are suggested as they ripple outward.
Tools for navigation used to read the stars and the shadows are echoed below
the globe. Stars in the corners represent the twelve tribes of Israel.
How do we begin again? Through the paper lace, the book of
Genesis overlays a canvas. The text is hard to read, clouded by oil paint. How
do we begin again? Listen through the haze, through the clouded reality, for
God’s call. God is calling as we begin again.
“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
—Genesis 12:3 (NRSV)
Dear God, it doesn’t feel like much of a blessing these days. We carry on in this journey, beginning yet again. We are called, like Abram—to navigate, to persevere, to be a blessing.
4 Wirzba, Norman. This Sacred Life: Humanity’s Place in a
Wounded World. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2021). 50.
*reprinted with permission from A Sanctified Art
No comments:
Post a Comment