I once heard that the Bible records God speaking to Abram 7 times.  I haven’t counted, so I am believing that fact to be true.  7 times isn’t a lot.  The first time we’re allowed into their conversation Abram is 75 years old.  75 is pretty old.  Obviously, Abram doesn’t have a recorded history of God.  He has this local deity, who tells him to move.  Now if your God is localized and he tells you to pack up and move, that is saying something about the character of your God.  He is not confined to the location you’ve projected upon him.

His first specific command is, “Leave here and go somewhere else; don’t worry about where.  I’ll show you.”  Before the Tom-Tom or any sort of GPS, he just moves.  Moving was a big deal.  The family wealth and accumulated resources were confined to wherever it was one’s life began.  Your future was intricately tied to your past.

Throughout the story Abram does quite well for himself.  It began with an unspecified directive.  “Will you give up everything that makes you secure; your past and your future?”  I would have waited for something more specific.  Like, “Will you become a doctor for the Lord, thy God?”  Of course I will, that’d be great!  But that’s not the invitation.  The invitation is to leave the land of his father.

If I were Abram and I chose to follow this God, I’d expect a lot more communication along the way.  6 subsequent conversations, one of them being, “Sacrifice your only son,” might leave one feeling a little lonely.  He isn’t told much.  God promises blessing, and then shows up every few years after that for a brief word with Abram.  The rest of Abram’s story is strangely random.  This is comforting and disconserting all at once.

Comforting in that often throughout life we have no answers, maybe a promise or two in which we place some hope.  Disconserting because most of us would like to have some sort of plan.  Maybe not a huge plan, but something better, more concrete than pack up and leave your future.  Sometimes that’s all we get.