Wednesday,
January 29, 2020
One day Cain suggested to his brother, “Let’s go out into the fields.” And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother, Abel, and killed him. Afterward the Lord asked Cain, “Where is your brother? Where is Abel?” “I don’t know,” Cain responded. “Am I my brother’s guardian?” But the Lord said, “What have you done? Genesis 4:8-10a
What have YOU
done? To have the sovereign creator
of Heaven and earth lay that question on you must have felt like a Tsunami,
earthquake, and end of the world atomic explosion all rolled into one! When God asked the question about his
brother, Cain’s answer, “am I my brother’s guardian”, was of a classic category
known as open-mouth-insert-foot. Cain tried to deflect the question and
somehow dodge his responsibility for killing brother Abel. But God, ever existing in truth, rolled back
the foolishness of Cain’s fig leaf defense he’d learned
from his parents and revealed Cain’s raw guilt.
There are times you can choose to run, but you can never hide from God!
My bride and I do the grocery
shopping together on the day when our grocery store has a discount for
seniors. It’s wall-to-wall blue hair and
walkers (at my age I can say that). This
week the shortest line had 3 baskets in front of us. Elizabeth went off to find tofu while I
waited. As I dutifully guarded our basket’s
spot in the checkout line from a geriatric line-jumping woman in a motorized
cart, I watched the cashier, a tall, pleasant young man. I listened closely to know if he’s carding
the customers to prove entitlement to the discount. I don’t get asked my age much; the computer
running everything in those stores has my name, birth date, Social Security number
and firstborn’s fingerprints…it knows I’m older than Noah.
When it was my turn to check out,
the young man greeted me with a smile and asked paper or plastic? I grinned back and gave my usual sarcasm; I
said, surprise me. And so,
he did. I looked at his name badge. In this chain-store it’s first names only on
the ID badges, and my attendant’s name was easy: CAIN! He did surprise me, because I’d never met anyone
whose parent had forgotten the name you lay on your kid will follow him all the
days of his life! And then I looked at
Cain’s bagger putting my groceries in plastic; he was JOSHUA. And here I am, a preacher with Genesis and
Exodus staring me in the face. This was
gonna be fun!
I opened with, how did your
boss ever manage to get you two to wear Cain and Joshua badges in the same line? Cain grinned a little, shrugged his shoulders
and scanned the tofu package. Joshua
just gave me a blank look. I surmised I
was facing two kids not familiar with the basics of Old Testament 101.
Entering the aforementioned open-mouth-insert-foot
zone, I just couldn’t leave it there. Pointing
to Joshua I said to Cain, good thing his name isn’t Abel…he would’ve
called in sick today. Nothing…silence…scanning
beeps…apples-beep, cereal-beep, spaghetti squash-beep.
Pressing forward in the downward
spiral, destined to wind up in discount day hell, I opened my mouth one more
time, I guess you never get that about your name. Cain’s eyes rolled a little, he sighed almost
inaudibly, and without expression, still scanning…he said,
EVERY.
SINGLE. DAY.
As a pastor, and more importantly
as a Christian man, I sometimes forget that when I pull the trigger on my words
without considering where those words might end up, I could be doing more damage
than help. About now my words are lodged
somewhere deep in my windpipe.
Recognizing we live in a cultural minefield these days, and our words
can be like matches in a dynamite factory, we need to remember that behind the
name tags reside the lives of those for whom Jesus Christ died.
Our words do matter.
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