We grow comfortable in our settlements. We’ve grown accustomed to the noise, the distractions. But then we face those uncomfortable pauses, those uncomfortable moments of silence in the still of the night.
The call comes like an irritant. The call unsettles us. The present no longer satisfies. We must seek out the Promised Land—even if it means finding it in the middle of the wilderness.
Abram heard the call.
Abram was not a father. His very name meant father, and yet, he was not a father.
Many, many years ago, when he was a young man, he dreamed of large family. His family would be a great people. But the dream faded, as dreams do.
In the meantime, life happened. He grew older, his wife grew older, and his youthful hopes slowly slipped away.
But sometimes in the quiet loneliness of the night, he dreamed of the son he never had. He silently laughed as he watched the young boy pestering the sheep. And he even felt the pangs of fear when the boy would disappear, hiding in the bushes. Abram loved the son he never had.
One night Abraham slipped off into the field to relieve himself. As he stumbled back, a voice or a thought or an angel arrested him.
“Get out of here!”
“What?” In his stupor, Abram spun around striking at the invisible phantom. Then again.
“Get out of here! Get out this town. Get out of this country.”
The Word struck Abram. He fell hard and lay shaking beneath the voice.
“Leave your family behind. It’s time for you go home to a land you’ve only dreamed about. It’s time for you to become a great nation. You will be feared. Your friends will be blessed and your enemies cursed. And your generations will bless every living thing.”
The Word was terrifying. And yet, appealing. Even as the Word challenged him to abandon his world, it opened a world, a universe before him and within him.
This voice. This voice that repelled him in terror, attracted him. The Word impressed his soul with real life. It wounded him; it changed him; he could never be the same. He ached with a hunger to know the voice. The ache inside was so intense, that in an instant he was willing to leave behind all that he knew to follow the voice.
And so, the old man and his old wife said goodbye to civilization and set out into the desert, searching for a world he did not know, looking for the son in his dreams. The son he would find.
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