By faith Abel brought God a better offering than Cain did. By faith he was commended as righteous, when God spoke well of his offerings. And by faith Abel still speaks, even though he is dead.
Hebrews 11:4 (NIV)
The Man Who Never Spoke
Abel never says a word. In Genesis he has a flock, an offering, a death, and not one line of speech. Cain gets dialogue and God answers him, and Abel goes the whole way through without speaking.
Most of those commended for faith in Hebrews walked a long way or held out a long time. Abel has one act to his name and no speech at all. He brought God a better offering than Cain did, and God spoke well of it. Genesis says what he brought, the fat portions from the firstborn of his flock. Hebrews says he brought it by faith.
Then Cain took his brother out to a field. The approval came first and the field came after, and it didn’t slow Cain down by a step. Whatever God said over that offering, it was not a fence around the man who brought it.
Hebrews says Abel still speaks, and it says he speaks by faith. Genesis is where the blood cries out from the ground.
Things get done to people in rooms with the door shut, and many of them are never told to anybody. You can learn young how to answer a plain question about your own house without saying anything, and get good enough at it that nobody asks twice. There were two men in that field and no one else.
The Lord asked Cain where his brother was, and Cain said he did not know. “Your brother’s blood cries out to me from the ground.” Nobody had reported anything.
Some of what happens behind a shut door gets said once, years later, in a yard, to one person, while the two of them are pulling up what the winter killed.
A Prayer to Remember
God, I do not understand this morning, and I’m saying so. There is a thing that was done and never told, and keeping it has been mine to do for a long time now. You heard blood in a field before anyone reported it. I am setting this down in the same dirt.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
