"The LORD said to Abram, 'Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.' So Abram went, as the LORD had told him."
Genesis 12: 1-4a
There is something that has bothered folks like me for
years. In The Lord of the Rings trilogy,
why don’t Frodo and Sam take the giant eagles to Mordor to destroy the One
Ring? Why did they have to go all that
way, face all of those dangers, and almost get themselves killed when Gandalf
could have just whistled and called on one of those giant eagles to fly them to
Mount Doom, so they could just drop the ring in the fire? For those who have never read or watched The
Lord of the Rings, I apologize.
Why didn't they just use the eagles?!
The answer to that frustrating question that has haunted
nerds for so long is two fold: first, it
would’ve made for a dull story, and second, it’s about the journey more than
the destination. The end result, the
destruction of the One Ring, is important, but without the journey we don’t get to see Sam and Frodo grow; what's more, we don't to meet some wonderful characters like Golom, Legolas, or Tree Beard, nor do we get to see great battles like Helms Deep. In short, we miss out on pretty much anything from the middle of the first book to the end of the
third. It’s the journey that we remember
more than the final destination.
In the 12th chapter of the Book of Genesis we are
introduced to a man not unlike Sam or Frodo. His name is Abram, son of Terrah.
He is 75 years old when we meet him, living with his wife Sarai and
nephew Lot in a town called Haran in Ur of the Chaldeans. Abram hears God telling him to pick up and leave
this land that he has known since he was a young man, and go to a new place
where God will make him a great nation and will bless him and make his name
great. And so Abram’s journey
begins.
What a journey it is!
Abram and his family move into the land of Canaan, where God promises to
Abram that his descendants will be given this land. But they don’t stay there, they keep going,
to Shechem, to the hill country east of Bethel, and on toward the Negev. When a
famine strikes the land, they move down to Egypt, and then back up toward the
Negev, into the plain of the Jordan. They
keep moving, and Abram meets Melchizedek, king of Salem and priest of the Most
High God and gives him 1/10th of all his possessions. Lot, Abram’s nephew, gets
caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when God destroys Sodom and
Gomorrah, so Abram helps get him out. It’s around this time that God gives
Abram and Sarai new names—Abraham and Sarah—and promises that they’ll have a
son. When Abraham is 100 and living as
an alien in Gerar, which is between Kadesh and Shur, his son Isaac is
born. A few years later, God tests
Abraham by telling him to sacrifice Isaac, but when Abraham is about to do it,
God stops him at the last minute. Soon
after that they settle in Hebron, the land of the Hitittes, where Sarah dies. Isaac then gets married to Rebekah, his
cousin, and Abraham marries Keturah, who gives birth to six sons. Finally,
Abraham dies at the ripe old age of 175, buried with Sarah in the cave of
Machpelah in Hebron. Now that’s a
journey! Those are some characters; after all, where do you think Tolkien got his ideas from?!
A map showing the journey of Abraham and his family.
It was 100 years from the time Abram was first called by God
to the moment Abraham breathed his last.
And when all was said and done, Abraham did not inherit, control, or
even live in the land that God promised.
Instead, it would be over 400 years until the descendants of Abraham
would settle in that Promised Land. It
wasn’t so important for Abraham that he himself make it there, because he and
his family created promised lands wherever they went. They built altars to the Most High God, they
shared their faith with the people they met, and they embraced the journey
because that journey changed their lives--they got new names--and even their worldview--folks who're 100 years old aren't supposed to have babies. Moreover, the lives of their
descendants, and the lives of the kings and nations that they met along the
way were all transformed by Abraham and Sarah's journey.
We are all on a journey this Lent. Like Abram it is a journey of
transformation. It’s not always easy,
but it leads us to finding our true selves, the person God meant for us to be,
as Abram’s journey led him to become Abraham.
And along the way, we move, we change, we grow, and we learn something new
about ourselves, about each other, and about God.
What has this journey been like for you so far? In what ways are you being changed? Perhaps you’ve learned something new. Perhaps
you’ve encountered new friends and engaged with others in ways you never thought possible. The church I serve had its first women's retreat in two years this past weekend, and many of the ladies commented about how much they learned about themselves and each other. On Friday night, my dog Casey and I did slept outside with a group of students as part of the local community college's Night of Understanding for Homeless Awareness. During that cold evening I learned a lot about myself and came face-to-face with my own privilege, and I met God in the faces of the folks that we helped the following morning. This season of Lent invites us to go on a journey toward transformation, whether we are catechumens preparing for baptism at Easter, or we are just folks eagerly looking forward to the Resurrection, we are all on a journey of self-discovery, of growth, and of transformation. I wanna
hear about your journey! Has it been
hard? What kind of transformation are
you experiencing? I invite you to share your journey. Post something to social media, or take a friend to lunch this week and talk about this journey God has called you on. I think you'll be surprised at just how deep you can go and just how much God has already changed you!
Images from the Night of Understanding this past weekend. (Left) Students sit outside in the cold on Friday night. (Right) Folks show up to get supplies and have lunch Saturday afternoon.
