Faithfulness week1

  The LORD had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. ”

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.      Genesis 12.1-5

We don’t know much about Abram and Sarai when God called them to be the parents of the Jewish nation. We only know they were old, and we can guess that they were pagans like the Chaldean world from which they came. Some scholars have suggested that they were moon worshipers, serving some celestial set of gods and goddesses.

Then suddenly into their comfortable pagan world comes a voice unheard before. It is the voice of a God much mightier than those they have worshipped. It is the voice of the God. This unknown God speaks to them and says, ‘Leave your country, your people and your people and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you.’ And with this brief summons, Abram and Sarai, old in years, some would say too old to make such a pilgrimage, set out to obey God.

In so simple a way Judaism was born. An old man and woman obeyed God in a manner that went unnoticed in it’s day. It went unmarked, for few believed it remarkable at the time. Yet this is the way God works. He often begins great things through events that seem of no historical importance. A baby in a stable, an old couple doddering out of the moon temples of the Tigris Valley, such things comprise the methodology of God.

In such ordinary things comes the roar of God. The quaking world is reborn in the name of nameless people who obeyed the extraordinary claim God held on their lives. They were faithful, and in following their faithfulness, they were swallowed whole by God’s blessings.

Did you once hear a whisper of simplicity? Did it seem an unimportant thing? Did it seem unreasonable? Listen up! God waits to bless you. He longs to bless you. All you have to do is say, ‘Yes, Lord, I will!’ Then act upon the whisper.