Lord, do not go on past your servant. Genesis 18:1-10a

The story opens with an ordinary setting: Abraham is sitting at the entrance of his tent during the heat of the day. Yet this ordinary moment becomes a moment of divine encounter. “The Lord appeared to Abraham” in the form of three men. This opening scene teaches us something crucial about how God

works: God often enters into our lives through ordinary events and everyday people. This passage has also led Christian readers to see it as foreshadowing of the mystery of the Trinity—three persons, one God.

Abraham reacts immediately to the presence of the three men. He doesn’t just greet them; he runs to meet the visitors, bows down, and insists they rest, wash, and eat. [This running towards the three men recalls, for me, how the father in the story of the prodigal son, ran to his son as he returned home.] Notice that Abraham doesn’t delegate this duty or offer the leftovers from last night’s meal. Instead, he calls for freshly baked bread, a choice calf, curds, and milk. This is not just being polite—this is extravagant hospitality.

In Abrahams day, hospitality wasn’t just expected. It was a sacred duty. But Abraham goes beyond the cultural norm. His kindness and openness create a sacred space in which the presence of God can dwell. Abraham’s actions remind us that when we open our lives to others with generosity, we often create

space for God to act—sometimes in ways we cannot foresee.

The heart of this encounter is the announcement: Sarah will bear a son. It’s a promise given in the most improbable circumstances—Sarah is elderly and barren. She isn’t even in the conversation! If we read further in this passage, we learn she is listening from behind the tent flap. She thinks she is hiding, but of

course, she is not hidden from God. And God speaks a word into that deep place in her heart that has been filled for a long time with disappointment and dashed hopes.

It isn’t hard to see how Sarah represents the part of each one of us that has stopped hoping, that laughs bitterly at the thought of long-lost dreams ever becoming reality. But God asks, “Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?” That question cuts through the limits and logic of age and timing. It asks us to consider: what have we given up on? What promise from God have we stopped believing is possible?

It's easy to read this story as a simple act of hospitality in an ordinary day in the life of the ancient world. But the message within is powerful, and in many ways countercultural. Our world seems so filled with isolation, suspicion, and a tiredness that comes from busy lives. This passage calls us to step back and

reflect:

• On the strangers we encounter—those who might carry more significance than we first imagine.
• On the value of a shared meal, a listening ear, a cool drink offered in the heat of someone’s personal struggle.
• And most of all, on the possibility that God is still speaking, still promising, still surprising us—even when we’ve grown tired of waiting.

Some things to think about!

I hope you are having a great summer.