Brother's Keeper?

Do you remember the first time you heard the Cinderella story? Being in the stage of life that I now am in, I have seen many versions of the story and each version seems to take on the flavor of the culture.

Sometimes people look at the Adam and Eve story as an old story and have trouble relating the idyllic agrarian culture of that time and its events. Regardless of culture, ethnicity, race and time frame, the Adam and Eve record is about two human beings and their relationship with God. Whether Adam was black, white, middle eastern, farmer, immigrant or even right-brained or left brained, he was human and subject to the free-will choice nature God gave him. The same humanness is played out over and over today and it is displayed in every decision we choose to make.

When God  said "Where art thou?" to Adam after he had been deceived, Adam came out of hiding and told God the truth.  When God asked Cain, "Where is Abel?" He responded,  "I know not: Am I my brother's keeper?" This is a very arrogant rhetorical question that exposes his evil thinking. God knows Cain is lying and that he had murdered own his brother. Cain threw his own guilt back on God.

"Am I my brother's keeper?" That is a relevant question today. I truly believe from reading the Bible through and through that God's desire for His people is strength, power and confidence. Regardless of culture, Psalm 121 is true today:

121:1  I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help? (Nope! Pagan gods were worshiped in the hills.)
2 My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
3 He will not suffer thy foot to be moved: he that keepeth thee will not slumber.
4 Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep. (You don't have to wake God up!)
5 The Lord is thy keeper: the Lord is thy shade upon thy right hand.
6 The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.
7 The Lord shall preserve thee from all evil: he shall preserve thy soul.
8 The Lord shall preserve thy going out and thy coming in from this time forth, and even for evermore.