Mark the conduct of the man of faith. Why should he who has God’s promise that all the land is his squabble with his kinsman about pasture and wells? The herdsmen, naturally, would come to high words and blows, especially as the available land was diminished by the claims of the Canaanite and Perizzite. But, the direct effect of Abram’s faith was to make him feel that the matter in dispute was too small to warrant a quarrel. A soul truly living in the contemplation of the future, and filled with God’s promises, will never be eager to insist on its rights or to stand on its dignity, and will take too accurate a measure of the worth of things temporal to get into a heat about them. The clash of conflicting interests, and the bad blood bred by them, seem infinitely small when we are up on the height of communion with God. An acre or two, more or less, of grass land does not look all-important when our vision of the “city which has foundations” is clear. So, an elevated calm and sweet reasonableness will mark the man who truly lives by faith, and he will seek after the things that make for peace. Abram could fight, as Old Testament morality permitted, when occasion arose – as Lot would find out, to his advantage, before long. But, he would not strive about such trifles.
May we not venture to apply his words to churches and sects? They, too, if they have faith strong and dominant, will not easily fall out with one another about intrusions on each other’s territory, especially in the presence, as at this day, of the common foe. When the Canaanite and the Perizzite are in the land, and unbelief, in militant forms, is arrayed against us, it is more than folly – it is sin – for brethren to be turning their weapons against each other. The common foe should make them stand shoulder to shoulder.
From: Expositions of Holy Scripture, comment on Genesis 13:1-13.
