CBI Blogs

Four major plot lines dominate this week’s Torah portion (Vayera, Genesis 18-24).

First, three angels visit Abraham and Sarah. Abraham looks up and sees three men approaching, who turn out to be angels who tell them they will have a child together and name him Isaac.

Then, the angels look down toward Sodom and Gomorrah and go to destroy it. Abraham convinces God to let him save Lot and his family, who all make it out except his “salty” wife.

A little later, Hagar and Ishmael, having been banished, are tired and hungry, and Hagar cannot bear to watch her son die, so she places him on the ground and looks away. God then visits her, lifts her eyes and shows her a well.

Toward the end of the Parashah we read the Akeidah, the (terrible) story of the binding of Isaac. God tells Abraham to take Isaac to an undisclosed location where he will be sacrificed. On the third day of their journey, Abraham looks up and sees the mountain where he will build an altar and bind Isaac for the slaughter. Before Isaac can be killed, however, Abraham is stopped by an angel. He looks up and sees a ram caught in the thicket and sacrifices it in Isaac’s place.

There is a common thread that ties these four stories together. That thread is vision.

In each pericope there is a moment where a character’s gaze changes his or her fate. Abraham looks up to see the angels. The angels look down at Sodom. Hagar looks away from Ishmael, then God directs her gaze toward the well. Abraham looks up twice: once to find the location of the Akeidah, and once to see the ram.

Looking up, looking down, looking away—wherever we cast our eyes has a serious effect on what will happen in our lives. Where we look determines what we see. When we look down like the angels toward Sodom, we are destructive as they were. We might look down our noses on people we think are less deserving than we are. We may cast blame on those we perceive as below us. We behave negatively toward others, using insulting language and twisting truths to make ourselves look good. We look only at the facts that suit our needs instead of working for the betterment of ourselves and our people. Looking down is destructive.

When we look back we focus only on the past. Like Lot’s wife, we yearn for the way things were instead of being willing to look at the bright future that lies before us. While the world moves forward, looking back drags our feet, trying to tempt us toward the way things were instead of working together towards progress. It is good to be informed by the past, but if our eyes are only directed behind us, we will be as useful to the world as a pillar of salt.

When we avert our eyes like Hagar did with her son, we ignore problems instead of trying to find solutions that might be right next to us. Like a baby playing peek-a-boo, we believe that if we cannot see the problem, it is not really there. We pay scant heed to the cries of those in pain and therefore do nothing about the problems around us.

When our eyes are up we can see what is around us, below us, beside us, and what is above. Our awareness is focused upward and our actions follow. Abraham looks up and sees God’s presence in the three angels who approach his tent. He looks up again and sees the place God wants him to go. When he elevates himself in that place, when he is already high up and above the world, he has to lift his eyes again to see God’s true intent. No matter how high up we think we are, we must strive to lift our eyes, because there is always something higher.

Lifting our eyes allows us to do even more than look up. It allows us to really see, to understand, to be visionary. Acting with vision allows us to make positive differences in our world.