Spirituality by user35101283

In the ancient city of Ur, in Babylonia, there lived a good man named Abram.  One day, he and his wife Sarai set out from Ur to go to the land of Canaan.

Abram settled in the southern part of Canaan, and God said to him, “Look in all directors.  This is the land which I am going to give you and your children and their children, and it will be yours for ever.  You will have so many descendants that no one will be able to count them all.”

Although Abram had no children at that time, he believed and trusted God’s word.  He set up his camp near the sacred trees of Mamre at Hebron, and there he built an altar to the Lord.

One day the voice of God spoke to him and said, I am the Almighty God.  You must obey me and always do what is right.”

Abram bowed down and his face touched the ground.  God repeated His promise that Abram would be the ancestor of many nations, and then He said, “Your name will no longer Abram, but Abraham; no longer shall you call your wife Sarai; from now on her name is Sarah, and there well be kings among her descendants.”

Abraham must have found this news hard to believe, for both her and Sarah were very old.

One hot day Abraham was sitting by the door of his tent when he looked up and saw three strangers coming towards him. People were always very welcoming and polite to travelers in that country, so Abraham ran out, bowed to the men and said, “Sirs, please do not pass my door without stopping.  Let me bring water to wash your feet and some

Some time later God tested Abraham; he called him, “Abraham!” and Abraham answered, “Yes, here I am!”

“Take your son,” God said, “your only son, Isaac, whom you love so much, and go to the land of Moriah.  There on a mountain that I will show you, offer him as a sacrifice to me.”

Early the next morning Abraham cut some wood for the sacrifice, loaded his donkey, and took Isaac and two servants with him.  They started out for the place that God had told him about.

When David died, his son Solomon became King,  But after Solomon’s death, civil war broke out in Israel, and the country became divided in two kingdoms.  The tribes of Judah and Benjamin formed the Kingdom of Judah in the south, and the remaining ten tribes formed the Kingdom of Israel in the north.  The latter had a succession of kings, but none was very good;  these included one of the worst kings ever----Ahab of Israel.  He had a wife named Jezebel who was, if anything, worse than he was.  Both of them worshipped the Philistine god, Baal.

Now as often happened, God chose someone to pass on His message.  This was a prophet called Elijah, who was not afraid of speaking out for God.  He went to Ahad and said there would be no more rain until God (not Baal) said so.  God had decided to teach Ahad and his followers that only He had power over sun and rain.

Then God told Elijah to go to the brook called Cherith, where ravens would bring him food each day and he would be able to drink from the stream.  This Elijah did, but because there was no more rain after the brook dried up.

Elijah then went to stay with a widow and her young son.  They gave him food---though they had little enough for themselves.  But, because God was looking after them, the widow’s supply of food, small though it was, never ran out in the time Elijah was with her.

No rain fell upon the land for three years, and the drought and the famine grew very severe.  In the third year

This is the story of Abraham’s son Isaac.  Isaac was forty years old when he married Rebecca, the daughter of Bethuel (an Aramean from Mesopotamia) and sister of Laban.  Because Rebecca had no children, Isaac prayed to the LORD for her.  The LORD answered his prayer, and Rebecca became pregnant.  She was going to have twins, and before they were born, they struggled against each other in her womb.  She said, “Why should something like this happen to me?” So she went to ask the LORD for an answer.

Isaac said to Jacob, “Please come closer so that I can touch you.  Are you really Esau?”  Jacob moved closed to his father, who felt him and said, “Your voice sounds like Jacob’s voice, but your arms feel like Esau’s arms.”  He did not recognize Jacob, because his arms were hairy like Esau’s. He was about to give him his blessings, but asked again, “Are you really Esau?”

“I am,” he answered.