My Siblings' Keeper

The sun's just starting to set now- it's lighting the grains of my floor on fire again. It looks very similar to the sun rise I watched this morning, but somehow doesn't feel the same. I think this might be the third time in my life when I have had the entire house to myself for 24 consecutive hours. It feels weird. My family, minus my (ellusive) younger brother, all left 6 days ago. I think today is the first day I've actually felt comfortable wandering around my empty, silent house. I used to crave silence and solitude- it's the one entity in a family of 6+ that cannot be attained for any amount of force, money, or pleading. Then I started university. 12 hours a day, for days on end, I spend alienated in a secret world of theories, words, questions, and answers. Reading is not the escape it once was; now it is my prison. My family became my saviour, drawing me back to reality and the land of the living by things like supper-time games of quoting word-for-word lines from our favourite movies and books, filling the dishwasher twice daily, and acting as middle-child negotiator/translator/peacemaker/child-advocate-to-our-parents/secondary mother for various siblings. The earliest memorable stocking gift I ever recieved from "Santa" was a small picture book entitled, Blessed Are The Peacemakers. I absorbed that book. I became that book. Then I hit a stumbling block: I encountered Cain and Abel (Genesis 4). ...Now Abel kept flocks, and Cain worked the soil. In the course of time Cain brought some of the fruits of the soil as an offering to the LORD. But Abel brought fat portions from some of the firstborn of his flock. The LORD looked with favour on Abel and his offering, but on Cain and his offering he did not look with favour. So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Then the LORD said to Cain, "Why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it." Now Cain said to his brother Abel, "Lets go out to the field." And while they were in the field, Cain attacked his brother Abel and killed him. Then the LORD said to Abel, "Where is your brother Abel?" "I don't know," he replied. "Am I my brother's keeper?" The LORD said, "What have you done? Listen! Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to recieve your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yeild its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth." Cain said to the LORD, "My punishment is more than I can bear. Today you are driving me from the land, and I will be hidden from your presence; I will be a restless wanderer on the earth and whoever finds me will kill me." But the LORD said to him, "Not so; if anyone kills Cain, he will suffer vengeance seven times over." Then the LORD put a mark on Cain so that no one who found him would kill him. So Cain went out from the LORD's presence and lived in the land of Nod, east of Eden. Cain lay with his wife, and she became pregnant and gave birth to Enoch. Cain was then building a city, and he named it after his son Enoch."... Why does this story bother me? "Of course I'm my brothers' keeper, God. My sisters' too for that matter. You ought to bless me for it, in fact, considering how many of them there are." And yet. And yet I am always plagued by this restlessness, this need to wander around and do something more. My thoughts don't yield finished work the way they should. So I seek the presence of my family and friends and they distract me for a time, but never completely. I'm Cain, but I don't remember killing anyone. Where did it start? I was once told by my father that the reason Abel's offering was favoured over Cain's was that there was already an understanding between Adam and Eve and their descendants that blood was required for offerings (established with the clothing of Adam and Eve by animal skins at their expulsion from the garden). If that's the case, then the major problem was that Cain was too proud to trade his plants for his brother's sheep when approaching God. He wanted the relationship based on his terms, he didn't want to need his brother's help. It sounds so reasonable. But it twists so fast. So if I am Cain, then what are my terms? My older brother recently asked God to release me from my belief that I have to be all caught up and in control of everything I do- I must be perfect- before I can approach God. I will not bend. I will not admit that I am not already strong enough on my own. Maybe if I try hard enough for just a bit longer I'll be able to face God without shame, to accept what he has to give to me- good or bad. Pride. So ridiculous when the whole reason for the sacrifice is that I am not perfect, not sufficient. And only time spent with my Purpose-giver will change that. So I must give up my anger over being a peice of God, rather than the whole, and go sit with him for a while with my unfinished projects laid out before him for the seeing. I can't be my siblings' keeper if I won't submit to the guidance of my Keeper- I can't protect them when I'm using them as human shields from the eyes of God.