Witnesses
Your brother¡¯s blood cries out to me from the ground. Genesis 4:10
READ Genesis 4:2¨C11
In his poem ¡°The Witnesses,¡± Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807¨C1882) described a sunken slave ship. As he wrote of ¡°skeletons in chains,¡± Longfellow mourned slavery¡¯s countless nameless victims. The concluding stanza reads, ¡°These are the woes of Slaves, / They glare from the abyss; / They cry from unknown graves, / We are the Witnesses!¡±
But who do these witnesses speak to? Isn¡¯t such silent testimony futile?
There is a Witness who sees it all. When Cain murdered Abel, he pretended nothing had happened. ¡°Am I my brother¡¯s keeper?¡± he said dismissively to God. But God said, ¡°Your brother¡¯s blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother¡¯s blood from your hand¡± (Genesis 4:9¨C11).
Cain¡¯s name lives on as a warning. ¡°Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother,¡± John the disciple cautioned (1 John 3:12). Abel¡¯s name lives on too, but in a dramatically different way. ¡°By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did,¡± said the writer of Hebrews. ¡°By faith Abel still speaks¡± (Hebrews 11:4).
Abel still speaks! So do the bones of those long-forgotten slaves. We do well to remember all such victims, and to oppose oppression wherever we see it. God sees it all. His justice will triumph.
By Tim Gustafson
REFLECT & PRAY
What situations of injustice and oppression do you know about? What might God be calling you to do today?
Dear Father, You¡¯re the God who sees. Help me to see oppression when it happens and show me what I can do to counter it.
SCRIPTURE INSIGHT
Genesis, which means ¡°beginning,¡± is a book of origins. Genesis 1 tells how God created the universe and the first man and woman. Genesis 2 gives us the first wedding. Genesis 3 tells how perfect humanity became the sinful human race. Genesis 4 tells of the first family¡ªthe first parents, Adam and Eve; and the first sons, Cain and Abel. Adam and Eve were created by God, but Cain was the first human being conceived and carried in the womb of a woman. We also see the children in worship. Cain and Abel didn¡¯t come empty-handed but brought offerings to worship God, so they must have been taught about Him and how to worship Him (vv. 3¨C4).
K. T. Sim
