I have finished all my favorite verses and comments--from the New Testament--in the book I am compiling for my granddaughter Amy.  I am writing them by hand, in Cursive, and the thought crossed my mind that if she hands it down to another generation, they probably won't be able to read it.  Because they are cancelling Cursive in school.  At least that is what I've heard.  Which is sad.

I have now started writing verses from the Old Testament, and couldn't help but include a few verses about Ishmael  and Isaac.  Abraham's two sons.  God promised Abraham and Sarah a son--but Sarah laughed, and said how could that be at their age--and sent her handmaid into Abraham.  With the result that Ishmael was born--and later, (after Sarah had Isaac--in her nineties) Ishmael and his mother were banished to the desert.  Ishmael is the father of the Arabic people.   Isaac, through Abraham and Sarah, is the father of the Jews.  Thus, the wars began over who was the rightful heir of Abraham. 

I sometimes wonder why politicians think that they can settle a fight that has been going on for over four thousand years.  They hate each other.  We Americans are sometimes rather arrogant.

To Christians, however, the fight is immaterial to our faith.  Once Christ came, the covenant promise made to Abraham was fulfilled in Jesus.  Now there is no Jew, nor Gentile where God is concerned.  Nor male or female.  All people are welcome to become the children of God through Christ.

Problem is, neither Jews nor Muslims accept that God became a man and Jesus was that man.  The Jews are still waiting on their Messiah to come.  They don't accept all of the prophecy from their own books--the Old Testament--that were fulfilled in Jesus.   The Muslims disregard the entire Bible and have invented their own version and their own God--who is not God at all.  And the whole world is paying the price.  You can't help but wonder what would have happened if Sarah would have believed and trusted God to send her a son.   And wonder if we are any better than she was.