Of Abraham and Home

This morning I dropped Violet off at the daycare and walked back out the main hallway and I noticed the sign on the wall, which I had read scores of time already, "God Bless America, Our Temporary Home."It reached me this time and the needle in my mind began threading together a series of conversations and thoughts of times recent.

In Genesis 12 God comes to Abram and says these fantastic and frightening words, "Go from your country and kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you." There is ascending sacrifice, a sacrifice of degrees: leave your country, leave your people, leave your nuclear family. Then there is the vagueness of it, "Go to a land I will show you." Calvin said that Abram believed the "verbum nudum," the naked word of the Lord. Abram was not told that Canaan was indeed the land until he got there.

The sacrifice was great but the promises even more so. Abram will become a nation, his name would become great and he would in turn be a blessing. His wife is barren; they would be happy with one kid, but a nation? They lived among moon worshipers, people who sacrificed to the earth for blessing and fertility. And as Abram stood outside his tent and breathed his cloudy breath into the chilled night air he would see the moon, the stars and even our galaxy. And I'm sure the vastness of time and space and the brevity of life came to mind. Can you imagine the emotions evoked when he was told, "You live among those who prize the moon and the earth for fertility, but I'm going to number your children like I've numbered the stars."?

How would this be accomplished? He would become "great," and this is the same sense and the same word that the people at Babel used. They wanted to grow big and prosperous and make their names great by gathering. And Abram? He would become great by scattering, by going, by living sent. He takes a 800-mile trek which would have taken him through the Promised Land and through some of the urban centers of the day. How, God, will this take place? I'm a country boy. I wrangle livestock; I know nothing about nation building. I know my family, my people and my country and that' about it. I've never lived with the notion of being sent. I've never lived "sent" before. How will this be?

Recently Barb and I have been talking about home and place and what makes a space meaningful. She and I grew up with families who didn't move, but stayed in the same home even until today. There is a familiarity and a rootedness in that that's hard to explain. Home is a space on Birch or just off Highway 30. Our life is different though, as Barb and I have moved 6 times in 7 years. It's an interesting dichotomy.

I guess what makes this story of Abram so radical is that it challenges me to rethink the dominant notions we all have, that deep yearning for settlement, security, for a place. Isn't there a piece in all of us that wants to hunker down, to feel like we belong, to have a history and people who share that history with us?

Abram had that too. And he had more. We all want to be useful in this life. We all want to have meaning and purpose. Don't we all want to stand under the bowl of stars and hear God exclaim, "Yours is a bright and bountiful future. You will change lives." Yet Abram knew of the future but the promise was more for his family tree than for him. It wasn't a delay in fulfillment as much as it was a grace to know God is true and will remain so even if it is not for him.

Man, this just grinds into me and pushes so much out. Why do we long for stuff, STUFF!, on earth that we know we will one day have to replace? Why do we long for the best location, the best landscaping, the best decor, the best . . ." And we are Christians! We have Jesus, the soul-reviving, all-rewarding, all-fulfilling Savior and yet our hearts still crave for STUFF! This is definitely a signal that something is not right, something has gone awry. Something tells me this has something to do with 2 people in a garden way back when. I'm like them. Honest, I am.

Even so, God says in Hebrews, that Abraham obeyed and went and made his home in tents (nothing to permanent about that). Why? Why would he leave his country, his people and his family? Why would he go to a new place and live a life of being sent? Because "he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God."