Scripture Daily

Context No. 1324 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 12:1-6: in context

1Now the LORD said to Abram, “Leave your country, and your relatives, and your father’s house, and go to the land that I will show you. 2I will make of you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great. You will be a blessing. 3I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who treats you with contempt. All the families of the earth will be blessed through you.” 4So Abram went, as the LORD had told him. Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5Abram took Sarai his wife, Lot his brother’s son, all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people whom they had acquired in Haran, and they went to go into the land of Canaan. They entered into the land of Canaan. 6Abram passed through the land to the place of Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time, Canaanites were in the land.

The story of God's people begins with a command and a promise. The LORD says to Abram, leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land that I will show you. And he attaches a sweeping promise: I will make you a great nation, bless you, make your name great; you will be a blessing; and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. So Abram goes, as the LORD had told him, seventy-five years old, taking Sarai and Lot and all they had, and comes into the land of Canaan, passing through to the oak of Moreh at Shechem, where the text notes, the Canaanites were then in the land.

Two things stand out in this founding call. First, the nature of the command: go to the land that I will show you. God does not tell Abram where he is going; he is to leave everything familiar, his country, his kin, his father's house, and set out toward a destination God will reveal only as he goes. It is faith stripped to its essentials, obedience before the picture is clear, trusting the God who calls more than the security of what is left behind. Abram had to start walking before he knew where he would end up. Second, the shape of the promise: you will be a blessing, and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed. Abram is not blessed merely for his own sake; he is blessed to become a blessing, chosen so that through him blessing would flow to the whole world. From the very beginning, God's blessing on his people was meant to pass through them to others, never to be hoarded. The two go together. The one called to go without knowing the destination is the one through whom the whole earth would be blessed; the venture of faith and the purpose of blessing others are bound up in the same call. God still calls people to step out before the way is clear, and still blesses them not to stop with them but to make them a blessing.

Am I willing, like Abram, to go where God calls before I can see the destination, and do I hold the blessings I have received as things to pass on, remembering I am blessed in order to be a blessing?

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