When Self-Preservation Fails

Today’s scripture: Genesis 12:10-20 (NRSV) (The Message) (KJV) What might God be saying to me?

My thoughts (Ciemone Easter-Rose):

Have you ever done something incredibly selfish? What lengths would you go in order to save your own skin? Would you sacrifice the well-being of others for your own sake?

While I wish I could answer no to these questions, when I was a teenager, I made some very poor choices. I was battling depression and anxiety, struggling with my sexual, religious, and racial identity, feeling alone, strange, uncomfortable, and unwelcome in most spaces that I found myself in — it was a recipe for total despair. I couldn’t talk to my parents about my issues, for fear that they would judge or reject me. I didn’t think I had any friends who would understand either. Most of the time, I just felt completely alone. One day, a woman reached out to me. She perceived me as someone in pain, and she decided to insert herself into my life — to help. She was a pastor, a mentor, a person I could trust and rely on — or so I thought. What I really found though was that the more I revealed of myself the less supportive she became. One day, I found myself on the outs with this person, and I had an abundance of feelings about that. So naturally, I put all of those feelings into an email and impulsively hit the send button. I regretted it immediately. In my panic, I did the only reasonable thing that I could think of at the time — try to get it back. To make a very long story significantly shorter — I quickly devised a retrieval scheme that was neither moral nor legal. I was too late to adequately intercept it, found out she had forwarded it to another person, and continuing in my spirit of impulsive and, at this point, vindictive behavior — I deleted her entire inbox and sent her a second message from her own account gloating about the endeavor. Spoiler alert — that didn’t work out so well for me in the end. The incident landed me in a State’s Attorney office at the age of seventeen. What began as a plan formed in a moment of panic, turned into a nightmare for me, for my parents, and for the pastor. In trying to solve one problem, I had inadvertently created another, worse situation — for everybody. I really wasn’t thinking about anyone but myself when I took those actions — I was just trying to avoid the trouble that was right in front of me. I acted in the spirt of self-preservation. The result was a short-sighted solution that I had little regard for the potential consequences of. Is any of this sounding familiar?

In today’s passage, we see that Abram was deceitful. He lied to Pharaoh because of his own fears and he put his wife in a terrible position. His solution was short-sighted, selfish, and unnecessarily hurtful to those around him. Perhaps if he had bothered to ask, God could have shown him a better solution. But when we panic, we don’t always think things through. The plague that God sent in the end may not have just been a message to Pharaoh, but one for Abram as well. When I think back to my own situation, I still shudder at the thought of what my choices almost cost me. I’m thankful that God never abandoned me even when I was clearly in the wrong — and God didn’t abandon Abram either. Instead, God intervened, sent a message, and I think — taught some necessary lessons to both of us.

Thought for the day: When panic strikes you or your neck feels like it is on the line, consider taking a moment to check in with God before you take your next step. If you really want to look out for yourself, look to God first. There will be far fewer hurts in the end.

We encourage you to include a time of prayer with this reading. If you need a place to get started, consider the suggestions on the How to Pray page.