'Cause I gotta have faith

By now I hope that you realize that on Thursday mornings we have been looking at people in the bible who have been called by God in some manner or another. If you haven’t, well, there you have it!

Now the majority of the calls that we’ve looked at have been attached to some form of action that the recipient was called to do. We saw Jonah being called to Nineveh, Paul being called as an apostle to the Gentiles, even Ezekiel proclaiming a message of mourning and lamentation to his people, the Israelites. Today’s call, well, the call that we’re looking at today, obviously this did not just happen 7.32 hours ago, is a little different than that.

Clue #1: He had many sons

Clue #2: Many sons did he have

Clue #3: I am one of them and so are you

I hope that brought back memories of your childhood and

encouraged you to don rainbow colours and a great deal of makeup.

Anyways, we are talking about Abraham strike that, we are talking about Abram.

I know what you’re thinking, actually that is a complete and utter lie, I have no clue what you’re thinking, but I do know what I’m thinking: Abram didn’t really do anything. Before you flog me, here’s what I mean; he didn’t have a great and powerful message that he went out to proclaim to the people. His message was through his actions, what he did (hmm, maybe that’s why Father Abraham is an action song). So let’s go take a look at his call.

Before you get all high and mighty about what a great follower of God Abram was, let’s take a pause and look at his family lineage. His family didn’t have the greatest history with the whole worshiping God thing. At this point in time, Abram himself wasn’t the greatest worshiper of God either. He was living a life in which he offered worship to many other gods, but not to the one true God.

That is a pretty immense demonstration of Abram’s faithfulness in God. There was God, a being that he wasn’t even aware of, making all of these promises and proposing these farfetched ideas, and you know what? Abram went for it! Unlike Jonah, or Moses or Jeremiah or many others, he didn’t put up any protest at all, as we see in verse 4 which simply say that he left. No fuss, no complaints, no inquiries as to who this God actually was; just simple acquiescence.

That Abram is a swell guy. He really goes above and beyond the call of duty. He trusts God all the time and never once doubts that God will keep his promise.

The best part of this reading is that it paints Abram as being completely human. He does have doubts, and he even acts on these doubts. Genesis 12, the second part, reminds us of how flawed a person he actually is and how we can relate to him because of these flaws.

I am a huge worrywart. At any point in time there are ten hundred different worst-case situations running through my mind. I can imagine situations that would be nearly impossible, and then convince myself that they are destined to happen. As these scenarios are running through my head, I’m coming up with solutions as well. I can get so fixated on these problems, and on these solutions that I forget to look at what’s happening around me at that very moment. As you can imagine, a lot of the time what I’m imagining and what’s actually happening don’t match up.

This is what I see happening to Abram. Their path has taken a little bit of a detour and for reasons beyond his control they need to travel through Egypt. The sweet part of this story is of course the fact that even after having been married for a fairly significant amount of time, that Abram still found Sarai to be the most attractive woman in the world. The not so sweet part is, of course, that in his “Worst-case Scenario Plan” (heretofore referred to as WoSP…not to be confused with WASP) he puts his beloved wife in a very awkward situation in order to save his own life.

Of course at this point God completely forsakes him and leaves him to figure out this mess on his own.

“I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.”

God kept his promise. Abram screwed up and tried to fix a situation that God had under control. As much as we laud Abram for his faithfulness we forget that, just like us, he had his doubts. His own fear and trepidation at times outweighed his trust in God. We all have those moments where we doubt what God is doing in our lives. We don’t trust his plan and we think that we know what’s best.

But God does keep his promises, even when we think he doesn’t. He sticks with us, even when we screw up the plans that he so painstakingly put together. The message that God has given Abraham to proclaim is one that is not limited to a specific time or place. It’s a message that continues on today and reminds us of the faith that God gives to each of us, and the forgiveness that he offers, even though we don’t deserve it.