God “shows up” all over the place in events recorded in the Bible and today, but He is not passive. Rather, the LORD is active in Earth’s affairs.
A pattern of behavior we see in the Torah reading וַיֵּרָא Vayera (“and He appeared”) is that when people are in “fight or flight” mode, they usually make very poor decisions. Lot’s “bright idea” to give his daughters to protect his guests from a vile mob, Lot’s daughter’s “bright idea” to get pregnant by their father a mere few days after they escaped from Sodom’s flames, and later Abraham and Sarah’s decision to lie to Abimelech about the extent of their kinship, all these poor decision had consequences.
We will see through the testimony of the words of God the interplay between the promised one, Yitskhak (Isaac), and the one born only through the flesh, Yishma’el (Ishmael).
