November 6, 2023

Genesis 12:1-9 (HCSB)
The Call of Abram
12 The Lord said to Abram: Go out from your land, your relatives, and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation, I will bless you, I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, I will curse those who treat you with contempt, and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through  4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was 75 years old when he left Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated, and the people he had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, 6 Abram passed through the land to the site of Shechem, at the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 Then the Lord appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your offspring.” So he built an altar there to the Lord who had appeared to him. 8 From there he moved on to the hill country east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. He built an altar to Yahweh there, and he called on the name of Yahweh. 9 Then Abram journeyed by stages to the Negev.

Tim Kirkup
In these passages, God calls on individuals to surrender control of their lives and trust in a whole new way of living. Being obedient, Abram (Abraham) and Sarai leave the comfort and familiarity of family and home and set out on a journey with no clear destination. They listened, obeyed, and changed the world. Paul talks about this event in Abram’s life and how it changes our world. And Jesus reaches out to someone at this level, someone well enough off to believe they don’t need direction and calls on that person to follow Him. It all looks good on paper, especially the pages of our Bibles, but how ready are we to let God lead us into new and different territory?