Am I My Brother’s Keeper?

A farmer and a shepherd. 

One who sows seeds in the ground of his field, which he nurtures and waters day by day to show his faith. He works with what he has and gives all that he can. 

And one who offers with his stained hands—hands that slaughtered lambs and reek of blood. 

Two brothers, One God. 

Cain, the farmer. In his field, he always tended his crops, where the blazing sun consumed him whole—picking his harvest from the ground, making an offering. 

Abel, a shepherd who kills to make a sacrifice. Sacrificing the purest and most spotless lamb, its breath choking on blood with every slice.

Two brothers, both offering something before the Most High.

But why was one favored more than the other?

“If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted?” 

My Lord, have I not given enough? Cain wondered. 

He does not understand why his plentiful harvest does not please the Lord, but Abel’s blood-covered sacrifice does.

And as the day passed by, his resentment grew deeper than the seeds he planted. 

His festering anger lingered; sin crawled towards his feet and wrapped around them like roots.

Until one fateful day. 

Cain called his brother to play in the fields. The wind brushed against their faces, wide smiles stretched across their lips. 

As he chased Abel across the field, their mother bore them in, across the grass that carried their childhoods under the same blue sky—but he abruptly stopped.

Then suddenly the winds changed and hardened around them.  Cain’s anger and jealousy returned; perhaps they never truly left. 

His smile dropped into a deep frown, while his brother, who stood in the distance with closed eyes, smiled at him. 

Cain sped up because he loved his brother. At the end of all his hatred, he truly did, for they both experienced the fields. 

And so, with a final shove, Abel’s head cracked against the unyielding earth. 

Cain stilled. 

He had committed the first murder in the Bible; did he even know what those words meant?

We all call him the first murderer, but how did he actually feel? 

Was he scared when his brother stopped moving after he crashed to the ground? Did he, for a split second, imagine he was just asleep? 

When God asked him, “Where is your brother?” and he answered, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”, was it defiance speaking or sheer terror?

Did he realize what he had done? The permanent damage he inflicted? Did he only then realize its weight when God grew angry and told him he had killed his younger brother? 

The moment when Cain’s hot, searing, bloodstained hands caused Abel’s pulse to still, he sealed the curse. 

Cain loved his younger brother—he tried so hard to face away from his envy and anger. However, in his eyes, God loved Abel more.

What more can a brother do when the thin line of comparison separates them? 

Cain stood over the sleeping Abel. “Look at where glory gets you,” a deep, brooding voice roared. 

Then he stood under the Lord and said, “I am a sower, not a saint.” 

“For that, dear sower who slew the saint—” The Lord cursed Cain’s mind, marking him for the world to see. “Let life be worse than death.” 

And maybe, hatred is a two-way street of suffering—one ends up at a dead end, the other an inevitable curse. 

Maybe hatred is human. 

And maybe this was Cain’s blood sacrifice to God.