Most of you know, I think, that I’m a pretty big Star Trek fan. Not to the point of putting on a costume and going to a convention (although I did dress up as Mr. Spock for Halloween when I was in fourth grade), but I generally watch the older series, at least, in syndication whenever I can. There’s a channel on my TV service that plays the five classic series every night, beginning with the original series (the one with William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) at 7:00, and continuing with The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and finally Enterprise at 11.

As it generally happens in the Narrative Lectionary, we’ve skipped quite a bit between last week’s reading and today’s. Last week we met Abram, later to be called Abraham, and his wife Sarai, who became Sarah. They were living on a dead end street, elderly, no children, just a nephew they had taken into their home after his parents died. And God promised to make from them a great nation, even though they were both old enough to be on Medicare.