I'm taking a class called Perspectives for the next 4 months. It's goal is to provide a bird's eye view of missions over the last several thousand years. The reading load is intense and I've already come to realize how lazy my mind has become since finishing school in December. Fortunately, I have fellow students in the class to criticize and encourage me as I struggle to write answers to questions that could puzzle me for months. I have a notebook of questions that I keep with me constantly. Whenever a questions arises, I jot it in the notebook and then when I am with a friend or happen to be stuck next to an enthusiastic buddhist on a 7 hour plane ride, I can whip out my notebook and collect a slew of answers. It was my intention to start typing up questions and answers on this blog and I might still do it, but in the meantime, here is my first assignment from Perspectives. I'd be interested to hear your opinions...emailed or public. :)
God’s covenant with Abraham was like a precedent for the way he wants to do his work in and through every people/person. He gave Abraham a promise as he does with each of us (“there’s a land for you out there”) and a command (“leave and go”). We can see in Abraham an example of trust, failure, doubt, success, and obedience – all of which are phases through which we will walk as we fulfill that same purpose that God has for us.
The “leave and go” part of the story has always escaped my scrutiny until a few weeks ago when my grandpa and I were talking about it in Brazil. He mentioned that Abram’s father, Terah was the first to leave and go into new territory (v.31). It says that Terah took Abram and went out of Ur to the land of Caanan. But, he stopped half way. Why? The writer records that Terah’s son, Haran, died before Terah while they were still living in Ur (v.28). Children are not supposed to die before their parents. What pain that must have cause Terah. After Haran’s death, as the family journeyed towards Caanan, they arrived at a city called Haran. There they stayed and there Terah eventually died. Could it have been that God had planned for Terah to make it all the way to Caanan, but that when God asked him to pass through the memory of his greatest pain (Haran), he couldn’t do it?
I realize that I’m completely speculating, but it did give me pause to consider that it is so frequent in life that I come across pain or difficulty and simply stop in the path, not wanting to walk through it to get to what God has on the other side. Revisiting this story prompted me to remember that God sees the bird’s eye view of my journey. His promise to Abraham was “a land that I will show you”. Abraham’s responsibility, like ours, was just to place the next step, trusting that the Lord knows the end and the reason.
This is his promise to all people, modeled first by his covenant with Abraham: leave and go (whether that means your country or your comfort zone) and I will give and show (my goodness, my saving grace to all people, myself strong on your behalf).
Another beautiful and life giving element of this story is how God reassures Abraham of the covenant in chapter 15. By walking both sides of the covenant, God reminds Abraham and us that while he has plans for us and we should walk in them, he holds both sides of the deal in his everlasting, steady hands. The game is set up so that we cannot lose. We can make mistakes, causing the road to be bumpier and our feet to be more sore, but we cannot fail him because the final mile has already been written. He won because of us and in spite of us. What freedom.
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