Do you know how it feels for the whole world to compare you to someone else? For everyone in the world to appreciate their offerings more than yours? To feel as if you could never be competent or successful enough to please anyone?
In the very small beginnings of this world, when very few people walked the earth, I could never be as good as my younger brother, Abel. God looked upon his offerings of livestock with favor, but my vegetables were not enough for God.
In response to my anger God did not say, “I am sorry I made you feel this way.” God did not say, “I love you as much as I love Abel.” No. God said, “If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?”[1] God blamed me. God told me that I was not good enough.
People love to argue about what I did wrong. Why Abel received God’s favor while his big brother Cain was rejected. Perhaps I did not give God the best of my crops. Perhaps vegetables are not as good as meat. Perhaps God always preferred younger brothers. Whatever. It doesn’t matter. What does matter is what happened next.
I was full of anger and envy. I felt lonely and unappreciated. And I blamed Abel. I blamed my brother who could do no wrong, my brother who everyone loved more than me. So, I took him in a field and I attacked him.
Remember, in this world, there were only four of us. Nobody had ever died in the world. I had never seen someone lie motionless, their eyes fixed on nothing.
So, when I stood from where I crouched above my brother, I expected he would rise and follow me. When he did not move, I didn’t understand why. Nothing like this had ever happened to anyone.
Without meaning to I introduced death into this world.
God, of course, punished me. The ground into which my brother’s blood seeped would no longer yield crops for me. The vegetables that I grew which were never enough would forever be even less. The only meager gift I had to offer was taken away from me.
More than that, I was terrified of this new discovery of mine. This discovery that human life is fleeting. This knowledge that someday I would lie motionless just as my brother did.
I cried and pleaded with God, horrified by the thought of someone punishing me for my crime in equal measure.
But God said, “No. Anyone who kills you will suffer severely.”
A mark was placed upon me as a sign that I was protected by God. It was a sign of warning to any who might seek to cause me harm. The God who did not favor my offerings, who I assumed did not love me, promised to protect me from the fate I had caused my own kin.
[1] Genesis 4:7
Neglected Word 