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Abraham and the Unfamiliar Way

April 15, 2011


Doug Floyd

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father's
house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will
bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those
who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the
earth shall be blessed.”
So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was
seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife,
and Lot his brother's son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the
people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.
When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at
Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the
LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built
there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him. From there he moved to the hill
country on the east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the
east. And there he built an altar to the LORD and called upon the name of the LORD.
And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.
(Genesis 12:1-9 ESV)

Abraham1 leaves the world he knows and steps out into the unknown. Genesis tells us
that God tells Abraham to "Go!" Later, when Joshua recounts this journey we hear a that
God took Abraham out of the land.
And Joshua said to all the people, “Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, ‘Long
ago, your fathers lived beyond the Euphrates, Terah, the father of Abraham and of
Nahor; and they served other gods. Then I took your father Abraham from beyond the
River and led him through all the land of Canaan, and made his offspring many. I gave
him Isaac.
(Joshua 24:2-3 ESV)

God calls Abraham. God takes Abraham. Both happen at the same time. This suggests
the call of Abraham may have been more dramatic than a simple invitation. The call of
God is often cloaked in crisis, dissolution, and collapse of all our comfort places.

Sometimes our Lord stands at the door and knocks. Sometimes he comes like a thief in
the night. When you say the Holy Spirit is a gentleman never forget that this gentleman
is a wind and a fire that may blow your house down and immerse you in His living
flames.

1 I refer to Abraham by the same name throughout these notes though his name actually starts as Abram
and changes to Abraham during the story of this life.
We may sometimes speaks of spiritual formation as a series of disciplines like prayer,
Bible study, fasting and the like. These are helpful and certainly patterns that we see in
Scripture. But let us never assume spirituality is trapped within our scope or definitions.
All of life bleeds into one.

Our spiritual life is our family life is our business life is our personal journey of "self
discovery." God is no respecter of the categories we create and use to control our lives.
He breaks in anywhere and everywhere with His burning fury.

Consider Father Abraham.

Abraham comes from Ur, the wealthiest city-state in the world. The residents of this
world seem safer than those who live at the edge of existence. These civilized people
have structures of support that assure their daily bread, their security, their self image.

Abraham is called to leave this behind.

He is taken out of this land, this culture, this world. He is called to live in the land of the
people who live at the edge of existence. He leaves behind the world that guards his
identity, his control over life, his survival. He is sent to a land that his offspring will
inherit.

Much of his life is spent waiting and waiting and waiting for the promised offspring. He
never owns the promised land and dies with only a burial cave to him name.

Abraham's journey into nowhere is way of rescue for a world that is collapsing. Ur is
dying. Unlike Sodom, it's not being bombarded by fire from heaven, but it's dying
nonetheless. Before we even learn that the Lord calls Abraham out of the land of his
fathers, we find out that his wife Sarah is barren. In some ways her, barrenness
represents the end of the culture. Ur still appears to be thriving, but it is fading and
eventually fades away completely.

Ur is trapped by cyclical thinking. As a past-oriented culture, they believe they are re-
enacting some type of drama in the heavens. Ever person simply plays the role in
culture they are supposed to play just like their father and his father before him.
Abraham breaks the cycle. He leaves.

The businesses, cultures, and systems that seem so secure and successful have no
enduring quality. Our spiritual journey is often the story of stripping away of supports
that seem firm but ultimate have no enduring quality.
We really are on journey, traveling across a wilderness. Look around. What seems
permanent is temporary and fleeting. Whether you're surrounded by the comforts of life
or struggling to survive, remember that you are on journey. You are moving.

The struggles and the successes are temporary signposts.

God is calling you. God is taking you.

He is leading us from faith to faith. He is leading us from love to love. Though the way
seems clouded and unclear at times know that He is leading, He is guiding, He is
sustaining.

to be continued.2

Immersed in the Unfamiliar

Remind yourself, when you wake to a strangeness


of foreign lights through blowing trees
out the window of yet another hotel,
that home is only where you pretend you're from.
What's familiar sends you packing,
watching for "some lost place called home."
You're from wherever you go.

Rod Jellema

One morning you wake to a world that is unfamiliar. Suddenly you're an alien. Rod
Jellema captures this sense of unfamiliarity in his poem "Travel Advisory." He starts out
in a foreign hotel, among foreign people and the sense of strangeness we feel. He ends
by reminding us that when we return, we are still not home.

you're a citizen of never was a place.


Remember not to feel too much at home.

Abraham leaves Ur and never returns home.

He is searching for a city "whose designer and builder is God." He dies en route.
Abraham's life is a sojourn through the unfamiliar.

2 My friend David Legg ends his writings with the subscript "to be continued." There is always more to say
but it may not be the time to say and we may not even be the persons to say it.
Being in an unfamiliar place is uncomfortable. In the "Journey of the Magi," T.S. Eliot's
wise man returns home from the nativity and encounters an "alien people clutching their
alien gods."

In an unfamiliar place, we may hear similar sounds and see similar sights, but we know
we are not at home. Maybe the language is different. Maybe the customs are different.
The roads are surely different.

All the familiar markers are gone. Unfamiliar places can be the ground of adventure, but
they can also be the ground of disorientation. We may get lost. We may loose our sense
of direction.
We may lose control.

When we step off the plane, we may step into an alien city. Then again, we may step
into an alien city in our own hometown. A job loss, a job gain, a marriage, a divorce.
One change ripples through our world, and suddenly the familiar haunts grow unfamiliar.
We are lost.

In the land of the unfamiliar, our sense of control slips away. We may battle loneliness, a
sense of isolation, even a sense of loss. Suddenly, we realize our vulnerability. Life is
tenuous. We are so very thin.

God calls Abraham into a lifelong journey across an unfamiliar way.

We walk the same path. In Christ, we know the way, the truth and the life. And yet, we
see so dimly. Our Savior saves us from ourselves by calling us into the way of trust and
out of the way of control.

Our methods, systems, paradigms fall before the Lord of glory.

In this place of letting go, in this place of self-abandonment, in this place of unfamiliarity,
we discover.

We discover the strangeness of grace. The odd refractions of God's love, enclosing,
surrounding, sustaining us.

We gain new eyes to see the world afresh. What seemed like security was slavery. What
seemed like love was control. What seemed like success was a momentary glimmer of
a fading star.

In the place of unfamiliarity, we become children again.

We learn new words.


We sing new songs.

We play new games.

Unfamiliarity may become a garden of innovation and creativity.

Abraham leaves the land Ur and gives birth to a new race, a new people, a new world.
Thomas Cahill suggest that Abraham is the father of the Western world. Time and
space as we know change because Abraham walks away from the never-ending cycles
of Ur and enters into a world of possibility, of newness, of a real future full of surprise.

If you woke up today and suddenly everything seemed unfamiliar. Don't panic. The Lord
of surprise may have called you out of comfort into a whole new world of possibility.

to be continued.

Building Altars, Digging Wells

Abraham lives life en route.

He lives in between.

In between the encounters with the Lord.


In between the encounters with kings.
In between the promise of the son and the arrival of the son.

Life is mostly waiting in between.

His life is a travel journal. Always moving. Looking. Searching. Longing for a city, for the
place of promise.

Just around the next corner. And the next. And the next. The holy city of God is always
just out of reach. Just beyond humanity's grasp.

He wanders and waits.

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy once said of his time served in World War 1 that most
people don't realize the single greatest struggle of the soldier: boredom. In the war to
end all wars, Huessy says vast amounts of time waiting. Waiting for orders. Waiting to
move forward. Waiting.

What to do?
Remember back to the hot August summer days of childhood when the neighbors were
gone on vacation. No one to play. A long hot day of waiting.

Life sometimes feels like that long hot day.

In the soul-sucking heat of that day, Abraham does what he has to do to survive. He
builds altars and digs wells.

When life is stretched so very thin and human frailty becomes so very real, Abraham
builds altars. He worships the One who took him from beyond the river. Worship is like
breathing.

For the good God sustains his beloved people, and all we can do is lift up hands and
offer thanksgiving.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Every breath is gift.

Breath in, breathe out.

The way may be unclear. The days may seem long and hot. The promise may seem
long in coming. But the simple gift of breath continues.

Breathe in, breathe out.

In the waiting, in the long pause, Abraham worships. He becomes living song unto the
One God who rescued him from the world that was collapsing under its own decadent
blindness.

Abraham, the friend of God, believes, trusts, awaits the coming of the faithful One.
While he waits, he digs wells.

Come and drink.

Beneath the desert runs a river of life. Abraham drinks the sweet water of that river and
refreshes all those who live under his care.

Come and drink.

In the soul choking dryness of stark landscapes, water is life. So the people gather at
the wells. The well becomes the center of the community.
Come and drink.

Long before his three guests, Father Abraham plays host to many a thirsty wayfaring
one.

Come and drink

He wanders. He worships. He waters the dry land and the dry people.

We are Abraham's children. We've been caught up into Christ. And yet, we still wander
across fierce landscapes.

When the heat burns deep into our soul, let us not grow faint, but fall back into Love. Let
us breathe the fresh air of praise and drink the sweet cup of communion.

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