Abraham, Sarah, and me

 I have been reading about Abraham. This isn't anything new.  Two years ago when I landed on Abraham's story, the theme was "He obeyed and went, even though he didn't know where he was going." Over and over and over that was the theme in our life. 

I really love the way God speaks so directly thru scripture. Sometimes it really is there in black and white. We just have to stay connected. 

The Bible is a living book, so you're always learning something new, even if you have studied it a million times. I guess I had something else to learn from coming back to Abraham so quickly. This time I read his story backwards. I was looking for some information. Then I read his story forwards again. Pretty slowly. Here are some things that I learned:

    * Abram came from the line of Shem, Noah's son. Abram had 2 brothers, Nahor and Haran

    * Abram's youngest brother, Haran, had least three children. His son was Lot. Two daughters, Iscah and Milcah. Haran died early-ish in life, meaning he died before his father and before the family set out for Canaan. Haran's daughter, Milach, married her uncle Nahor. 

    *Abram's brother, Nahor had the same name as his grandfather. Nahor and Milcah had eight children. One was named Bethuel. Bethuel grew up, got married, and had his own kids. Bethuel's daughter, Rebekah would marry Isaac. 

    *Abram's father, Terah, was the one who left Ur to go to Canaan, but wound up settling in the land of Haran until Terah died. After Terah died, God told Abram to move and keep going to Canaan. Abram was 75 years old when they left the land of Haran. He took his brother's son, Lot with him.  

    *Abraham moved towns, a lot. (Or it seemed so to me.) He arrived in Canaan and God told him that this was the land He was going to give Abraham and his descendants. A famine came and they moved to Egypt. They were kicked out of Egypt because of a lie Abraham told. He moved to the Negev, then to Bethel, then moved between Bethel and Ai. Because their families had grown and their wealth was so great, the land could not support both Lot and Abram's families, so they split up to avoid quarreling. Lot moved east and Abram stayed in the land of Canaan and moved to a place called Mamre at Hebron.

    * God promised a very great reward to Abram. It wasn't fame or more wealth. It was descendants as numerous as the stars. Sarai got tired of waiting on the promise to be fulfilled and decided to help God out. Or maybe she thought they had heard wrong or that they were supposed to be doing something instead of just waiting. So Ishmael was born. This turned out to be disastrous. Want to know something else?? A long time later, one of Ishamel's daughters married Esau. And you know the relationship between Jacob and Esau was way less than friendly. Talk about some family rivalry and hatred!

    * Thirteen years after Ishmael was born, God changed Abram (meaning "exalted father") and Sarai's names to Abraham (meaning "father of many" or "father of a multitude") and Sarah (meaning, "princess"). 

    * Insert the story of Lot, his daughters, and Sodom and Gomorrah. Lot's daughter's had children by Lot. I know. And those children grew up to be the Moabites and the Ammonites. These 2 nations were enemies of Israel and they would fight all the time with Israel in the future. Why is this important? Probably lots of reasons, but interestingly enough, Ruth, David's grandmother, came from the Moabite nation. 

    * After Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed, Abraham moved again to Gerar.  Abraham lied about Sarah to the king of Gerar, Abimelech. I'm not sure if Abraham and Sarah moved again, but the king told them they could settle wherever they wanted to. 

    * When Abram first started out moving his family around, he was 75 years old. After 25 years and a ton of moving around, when Abraham was 100 years old,  finally Isaac (meaning "he laughs") was born. 

    * Abimelech and Abraham sworn an oath at Beer-sheba and Abraham lived in the land of Philistines for  awhile. Here is where the biggest test of Abraham's faith comes in. God told him to travel to Mt. Moriah and offer Isaac as a burnt offering. Mt. Moriah was about 50 or 60 miles from where they were living. God confirmed Abraham's faith and reminded him of the promise God made to make into a great nation. The father and son went back to Beer-sheba and settled there. Minus Egypt, from what I can tell all these places where Abraham and Sarah lived are all in the land of Canaan.

Whoa - I now have 8 million questions for all persons involved in this whole story from Terah to Isaac. So much backstory that we don't get to know about. But what we do get know - wow! I'd imagine family story time around the campfire was pretty interesting.

Abramham had great faith. But it wasn't built overnight and sometimes Abraham acted outside of his faith.  It was a life-long process of God leading Abraham to deeper and deeper faith. It was built over 25 years before Isaac and even after Isaac was born God still kept building and testing Abraham's faith.  

Abraham believed God and did not delay in his obedience to God. However, Abraham still made mistakes and sinned. One of these, a lie, even got them kicked out of a country! When confronted with his sins/mistakes, he acknowledged them and accepted the consequences or obeyed God as a result of whatever he was told to do. It is important to know that those sins/mistakes did not derail him from or change God's original plan. The results of those sins did cause a lot of problems in the future and changed a lot of lives. 

But also, God is completely honoring to His promises, even when we mess things up. Ishmael was a result of not waiting for God to bring out His promise in His time. But I would think Abraham loved Ishmael - he was, after all, Abraham's son. God did tell Abraham not to be concerned about Hagar or Ishmael because the off-spring would come thru Isaac. God told Abraham (and Hagar) that Ishmael would also be a great nation - (Ishmael had 12 sons too). God provided for Hagar and Ishmael when they were sent away.   

At the moment I feel like I can relate to Abraham and Sarah. Always moving around. One of my "words for the year" is rooted.  Brent and I usually move every 3 - 4 years.  I'm not sure I even know how to be "rooted" in the sense that we live in one place for a long time. Maybe this is a new season God is bringing me into. Have mercy, it might be hard because I am not one to sit still long. 

Abraham and Sarah's life does help. I would be Sarah. I can understand how after 25 years of waiting, she thought she might have needed to help the process. How many times have I second guessed myself or Brent's decisions because something took too long? How many times have I thought maybe I missed something and God was waiting on me to take some action before His plan could come to pass? 

It even sounds justified sometimes because we know that faith without works is dead!                                  But also, faith is worked out in our waiting too. 

I noticed something that I had not really thought about before. Abraham lived his life, obeyed God, and was a dad. That's it. Literally. He moved around and was a dad. All he had to be was a dad who raised his kid to believe and trust in God. And when God asked him to do something, he did it. So simple. 

God picked Abraham. Abraham chose to obey God. Abraham was just living his life. Growing up. Getting married. Moving from Ur headed to Canaan because his dad, Terah, wanted to move. Only they wound up stopping about halfway in Haran until Terah died at the age of 205.  After his dad died, God told him it was time to go. In Exodus 12, God speaks to Abraham and when He is finished speaking, the next verse says, "So Abram went, as the Lord had told him ...."  He just went. 

I am betting in Abraham's eyes, he probably thought he wasn't doing anything great at all. 

That's what I think sometimes. I am not doing anything great. I don't even know if anything I have done has even made a difference to anyone. But like Abraham, I'm a believer who tries to obey God when asked or told. I'm a mom who is trying to raise her kids to believe and trust in God. I'm a wife who tries to support her husband. 

It's a little hard to wrap up this post. Faith is life-long and deepening and growing. I can't put a tidy little bow on this post and call it done. I'm unfinished. Don't you love Philipians 1:6? Now, don't get me wrong - I hate waiting. I am not saying this is easy nor is it fun. I can get caught up in "I'm supposed to be doing something", when maybe I'm supposed to be still.  I might be alone in this, but I would like to imagine you feel the same way sometimes too. It's nice when others can relate. So I'll just be here writing, living, believing, waiting and obeying. You're welcome to join me.

P.S. I could totally be off here, so please correct me if I am wrong.