The readings for the Seventeenth Sunday in Ordinary Time make clear that God desires to share His power with sinful mankind.
To fully appreciate the importance of the first reading from Genesis, we must review what had happened just before this passage from Genesis. Abraham and Sarah were very old, many years past the childbearing age. Yet God had promised over and over again to Abraham that he would make his descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and the sands of the sea shore.