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Morning Devotion for the Season of Epiphany
January 29, 2026
Reading: Genesis 16:15-17:14
Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram named his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael. Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael. When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless. And I will make my covenant between me and you and will make you exceedingly numerous.” Then Abram fell on his face, and God said to him, “As for me, this is my covenant with you: You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the ancestor of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come from you. I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land where you are now an alien, all the land of Canaan, for a perpetual holding, and I will be their God.”
God said to Abraham, “As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your offspring after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant, which you shall keep, between me and you and your offspring after you: Every male among you shall be circumcised. You shall circumcise the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. Throughout your generations every male among you shall be circumcised when he is eight days old, including the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money from any foreigner who is not of your offspring. Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant. Any uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin shall be cut off from his people; he has broken my covenant.”
Meditation by Glenn Beamer
During the fall, I devoted attention to developing an efficacious Scriptural literacy curriculum for our Redeemer children. A reasonable approach identifies the types of books in the Old testament – history, poetry & prayer, and prophecies and connects these to the books in the New Testament – the gospels, epistles and prophecies. The second step is to articulate the connections we discern as God’s followers and the themes our weekly liturgies reinforce.
Better to engage six to ten scriptural connections that children can understand and replicate than to believe an eight-year-old can divine the thousands of connections embedded in sixty-six books of the Bible. Our Redeemer kids demonstrate their own imaginations and thoughts about what God is telling us. Having a refined focus enables a deeper engagement with God’s message to us. In today’s reading from Genesis, I realized a passage that I had heretofore overlooked, Verse 13: Both the slave born in your house and the one bought with your money must be circumcised. So shall my covenant be in your flesh an everlasting covenant.
God reveals to Abraham that Ishmael, Abraham’s son born through his surrogate Hagar, will, like Isaac, be circumcised and become a great nation. Ishmael’s inclusion in God’s covenant with Abraham is not incidental. It demonstrates the breadth of God’s love for his creation and for his people. God could have restricted his covenant to Isaac’s lineage, but instead God demonstrates his love for all his people by insisting to Abraham that Ishmael and his lineage will form a great kingdom provided they keep the promise represented by circumcision.
Discussions about inclusion have become fraught with secular ideology and caricature. Even without the nomenclature of “DEI,” misunderstanding God’s covenant can readily impair our spiritual journeys. A year after I had been confirmed Catholic, our William & Mary campus priest asked me about my faith origins. When I replied that I had grown up in the Moravian Church, Fr. Kelly said, “I’m sure that must have been a very rich experience. I hope we can talk more about it.” Fr. Kelly’s response made me feel much more secure in my decision to become Catholic; he affirmed that God’s covenant extended to all God’s children.
Ten years later at the University of Michigan, a second campus priest relayed that he had been raised to believe that protestants were “Successors to the heretics.” I was taken aback that thirty years after Vatican II this belief would prevail, let alone be openly articulated at a time when the Catholic Church was confronting monumental historical challenges.
This Michigan priest’s pastorate revealed to me that once we start restricting God’s covenant, we appoint ourselves God’s referee and restrict love that isn’t ours to allocate. A year after learning about my heretical lineage, two friends, both in their mid-twenties, had parents who divorced after decades of chaotic stressful marriages. Both friends expressed relief about their parents, and they came to St Mary’s Student Parish fairly expecting understanding and support. The campus priest informed my friends that according to Catholic teaching they were now “the product of an unholy alliance,” which would somehow affect their ability to marry in the church. A second priest made clear, in a non-confrontational way, that the unholy alliance designation was both hogwash and pastoral malpractice. It was also gratuitously nasty.
When we make ourselves judge and jury in allocating God’s love, our restrictive worldview becomes a cascade of exclusions. From the very first book of the Bible, God makes clear through Abraham and Ishmael, that God calls us to recognize his love for us and for all those around us.
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