The call of Abram.
Have you ever been asked to do something that you didn’t know how to do? Or maybe you did have an inkling about what to do but you had no idea what to expect from the experience. Or maybe you just didn’t know how it was going to turn out in the end.
I feel that way sometimes. Especially with “bigger” opportunities. Like traveling to a foreign country- you can read the brochures, maybe learn a little bit of the language, you can talk to other people who have been there, and the list goes on. You can do your best to prepare but the experience that lies ahead is overwhelmingly unfamiliar. Making the trip required a degree of faith on my part. I trusted that the currency I was taking would be accepted so I could buy food. I had faith that the people who were leading me around would have my best interests in mind and keep me away from danger. I had faith that the reservations that I made for hotels would be honored. I had faith that the planes, trains, ships, buses, and cars would carry me and my belongings around to the correct places.
In Abram’s case, he didn’t have any of the tools to check out the land that I’ve had. He didn’t have a guide. He didn’t have travel books or blogs to read in preparation. He didn’t have the handy apps like Google translate and currency exchange apps and Google maps to follow. He had a call from God. Verse one, “Now the Lord said to Abram, Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land I will show you.”
Dropping down from verse one to verse four “So Abram went”. He didn’t just go, but he went “as the Lord had told him.
What speaks to me through this passage is the FAITH Abram exhibited. Nothing is written before this encounter with God tells me that Abram and God had a long, tested, relationship. Faith is the confidence in what we hope for, it is the belief in something or someone that we cannot see.
God invited Abram to go. He asked for a response. God does that to all of us. We who are surrounded by the evidence of God. We who hold the scripture in our hands and can “fact check” all of the things God wrote about. We have much more reason to go and to do. Most assuredly more than Abram had.
But do we?
Do I?
Remember the Diana Ross song, do you know where you’re going to- do you like the things that life is showing you- where are you going to- do you know?
This encounter between God and Abram really forced me to ask that question. Where am I going? Do I know? Who am I serving? When God asks me to go, do I?
It’s about FAITH. Do I trust God enough to act in obedience? Like Abram can it be written of me, ” So she went.” ?
