January 6 - Genesis 15-17:27

Admit it.  Circumcision seems an odd, odd thing for God to pick as a marker of his people.  Right?  It's so personal and embarrassing and only focusing on the males.  I know, I know it wouldn't have been a foreign concept to the people of Abraham's day and scholars point to the hygienic nature of it.  Still.  Why a marker that nobody is going to see unless you bare yourself?  Isn't a nose a better indicator of whether someone is Jewish or not?  Maybe God wants his mark to be seen only when we bare ourselves...show our underwear as it were.  I'm speaking metaphorically, of course.  It's a very humbling thing this circumcision and, again, a big unexpected of the Lord of the Universe to mark has claim on us in such an intimate and embarrassing way.  Why not a really cool tattoo on our arm or face...or even, well, on the tush if God's mark just has to be somewhere private.   Why not the really cool nose ring that Rebekah has?  (Oops, I'm moving ahead.)  Or a piece of jewelry we can wear around our necks?  A yellow rubber band we can put around our wrists?  It's funny to me how matter-of-factly those of us who "grew up in the church" can talk about circumcision and just accept that "Yep, God wanted 'em to just cut it off"...until we have to explain the whole deal to a third grade Bible class.  

God just wants his mark on us to be intimate, personal, connected to our most private lives.