Taking Care of People
At the beginning of time, God formed Adam from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life. God planted the beautiful Garden of Eden and placed Adam there. Until this time, God had declared the things He had made good or very good. In Genesis 2:18, for the first time God declared something not good. He said:
It is not good for the man to be alone.
You know the rest of the beautiful story. God made Eve and gave her to Adam.
When we think about how to take care of people, it is important to remember that it is not good for people to be alone. It is true that people need time by themselves sometimes, and that the amount of alone time people need varies from one person to another. Still, people need people. It is not good for people to be alone. Certainly some people live alone, but those people need loving attention. It is simply how God made us. He knows it, and He wants us to know it, too.
We are familiar with the story of Eve committing the first sin and then encouraging Adam to sin in the same way. Their sins were a direct violation of God’s spoken commandment. They were sins against God. Eve’s was the first sin; Adam’s was the second.
The next sins that Genesis reveals to us resulted in Adam and Eve’s first son, Cain, murdering his brother Abel. Obviously, Cain’s sin was a sin against God and against a person. God asked Cain: “Where is Abel your brother?” (Genesis 4:9). Cain responded that he did not know, and Cain asked God a question:
Am I my brother’s keeper?
Genesis 4:9
How should we answer that question? To varying degrees, I am my brother’s and sister’s and children’s and mother’s and father’s keeper and the keeper of many others whom God has placed in my path.
God cares how we treat Him and how we treat one another. When a lawyer asked Jesus which is the great commandment in the Law of Moses, Jesus replied:
You shall love the Lord your God
with all your heart, and with all your soul,
and with all your mind.
This is the great and foremost commandment.
The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’
Matthew 22:37-39
On one Sabbath day, Jesus entered a synagogue and taught the assembled people. One of those people had a withered right hand. Scribes and Pharisees watched Jesus closely because they wanted to see if He would actually heal a man on the Sabbath. Jesus knew what they were thinking. He told the man to get up and come forward. Jesus asked the scribes and Pharisees a question:
I ask you whether it is lawful to do good on the Sabbath or to do harm,
to save a life or to destroy it?
Luke 6:9
Jesus answered His question with action. He told the man to stretch out his hand. The man obeyed, and his hand was restored.
I think in a way that Jesus was answering Cain’s question. “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Yes.
God’s Word teaches many ways for me to take action and thereby be my brother’s keeper. Here are a few of them that relate particularly to taking care of the members of our families.
Thank you for laying your life down daily for your children.
For God is not unjust so as to forget your work
and the love which you have shown toward His name,
by having served and by still serving the saints.
Hebrews 6:10
Beautiful post and images! Thank you!