Change always means leaving the security of the familiar and learning to trust God, the power greater than ourselves. Abraham, originally called Abram, began his journey toward friendship with God when his father, an idol-worshiper, decided to go to the land of Canaan, but made it only as far as Harran.
Not until after his father’s death did Abraham hear God tell him to leave his relatives behind and move on to Canaan. Rather than allow sentimentality to fasten him to his home of origin, Abraham responded to God’s promise to bless him, multiply his descendants and show him a new land. So Abraham ventured out in faith to the realm his father had dreamed about, risking the safe for the unfamiliar.
Abraham’s journey into the unknown at age 75 provides a model to all of us who have had to leave familiar surroundings or unhealthy patterns to get healthy and to come into a closer relationship with God.
10 Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe. 11 As he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know what a beautiful woman you are. 12 When the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife.’ Then they will kill me but will let you live. 13 Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well for your sake and my life will be spared because of you.”
14 When Abram came to Egypt, the Egyptians saw that Sarai was a very beautiful woman. 15 And when Pharaoh’s officials saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh, and she was taken into his palace. 16 He treated Abram well for her sake, and Abram acquired sheep and cattle, male and female donkeys, male and female servants, and camels.
17 But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household because of Abram’s wife Sarai. 18 So Pharaoh summoned Abram. “What have you done to me?” he said. “Why didn’t you tell me she was your wife? 19 Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her to be my wife? Now then, here is your wife. Take her and go!” 20 Then Pharaoh gave orders about Abram to his men, and they sent him on his way, with his wife and everything he had.
In order to grow spiritually, we must first let go of the security of the past—even a “secure” but harmful past—and be willing both to make and learn from our mistakes. Abraham made plenty of his own: he twice pretended his wife was his sister, he tried to control the fulfillment of God’s promise by fathering a child with a concubine, and he struggled in his faith. But God rescued and protected Abraham both from his enemies and from himself, because he knew that even the child of an idol-worshiper who was willing could learn the art of trust. Regardless of our pasts, we, too, can learn to trust God if we will only let go.
