Theological thoughts at 6AM. Thinking about Abraham and how he is the iconic model for spiritual seekers. The scenes speak to me so powerfully of God calling him out and onward. “Lift up your eyes,” … “Look up at the stars …” God always inviting a new, bigger, broader vision ahead — but only if we are willing to come out of our tents and actually look up.
But this morning what struck me was the often ignored, seemingly insignificant detail at the end of Genesis chapter 11, right before Abram’s call. “Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot, and his daughter Sarai the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there.”
The Great Invitation is often given to community. They set out together. But then they got stuck. They got comfortable with a bit of newness, a change of scenery. They got to Haran and they stopped. They got a little prosperous and contented. They “settled there.” They — Terah, anyway — never made it to Canaan. They didn’t arrive as a group. The call then had to be picked up individually. “The LORD said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household, and go to land I will show you.'” Sometimes you gotta leave them behind.
It’s okay if your journey seems lonely, if it seems like you’re stepping ahead on your own, and no one seems to get it. That ambiguous saying of Jesus comes to mind: “many are called, but few choose [or are chosen].” It’s up to you, as an individual, to follow that prompting, the dream, or not. Others will likely reach a comfortable place and just settle there. Game over.
This, to me, is the story of most of the Christian Church and so many in it. They broke away from what they perceived to be the old, the dead, the restrictive. They left Ur. But then they got comfortable in their Reformation theology, their evangelical blood atonement ideas, their “sinners in the hand of an angry God” ideology. They became comfortable in their “simply believe, and you’re saved” mentality. And they’ve lost the urging to keep journeying. They never reached Canaan — as is so evident in how the non-religious world views Christianity. (“That ain’t it!”)
At least twice more, the Spirit had to instruct Abram to “look up,” to “lift up his eyes” because our tendency is to settle. Keep going, my friend. There’s so much more ahead.