After the Fall, sin spread like a weed. Cain killed his brother Abel, and violence filled the earth. But Noah was a good man who walked with God. God told him to build an ark, and He saved Noah, his family and the animals from the great flood.
Afterward God made a covenant with Noah and every living creature, promising never again to destroy the earth by a flood. Its sign was the rainbow. The Church sees the waters of the flood as a picture of Baptism, which washes away sin and begins a new creation.
People still tried to live without God. At Babel they built a tower to “make a name” for themselves, and they ended up scattered, unable to understand one another. Pride divides us; only God can bring the human family back together.
Then God called Abram, whose family came from Ur, to leave his homeland for a land God would show him. God promised to make him the father of a great nation, and that through him “all the families of the earth” would be blessed. Abram trusted God and set out, and God renamed him Abraham, “father of many.”
God promised Abraham descendants as many as the stars, even though he and his wife Sarah were old. In time their son Isaac was born. Then God tested Abraham, asking him to offer Isaac as a sacrifice. Abraham obeyed, trusting God, and at the last moment an angel stopped him. God provided a ram instead.
The first Christians saw Jesus in this story: a beloved son carries wood up a hill, and his father offers him. God spared Isaac, but He did not spare His own Son. Abraham is called our “father in faith” because he trusted God completely, even when he could not see the way.