The Oak at Mamre has inspired the painters of many icons. The visitors are seen as the Trinity our triune God who has revealed himself as the Father Son and Holy Spirit. Abraham receives him in the spirit of Bedouin hospitality; nomads take care of all they find wandering in the same deserts where they too may be lost and destitute in need of the same stranger's care as their own guests of today. Sarah has reason to laugh. She doesn't see the generations who will be descended from what seems to her to be a "daft" prophecy . Out of her descendent God  begets the Son who together with the Holy Spirit is taking rest in the shade of the tree at Mamre. It is hard to visualise these moments in scripture when the eternity of God is present in human temporality. It happens everyday when The Sacrifice of the Son is repeated in a lawful Mass and is our guarantee that the words of Jesus are absolute and nakedly True. "I am the Bread of Life" " I an the Way, the Truth and the Life".

Dear Lord, let me be aware this day of your Eternal present and let me do nothing to obscure your infinite goodness. Let me learn to habitually avoid sin, at least as habitually as I now fail to do your will.