Calling of Abram

June 15, 2020

Abram is called away from the world he knew. He is called to defy the traditions of his patriarchal culture, and to leave his father's home. This was a call to move forward culturally, spiritually, and economically. It was filled with risk and uncertainty, and yet Abram responded in faithful obedience. 

SCRIPTURE
Click here to read Genesis 12:1-7

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REFLECTION

Calling of Abram

By Andrea Taphorn

God called Abram to go from his country and his people, where Abram knew himself and his life, to unlearn who he was and who God is and how God creates and makes a family and a people. God called Abram to a new land, a promised land. This was an altogether different place, because unlearning who you are is the knowing and the learning that changes your life and changes your future.

I have been doing a lot of thinking and praying lately to unlearn systems I know so well. Systems that I don’t even see as systems, they are just life.  They are “the way things work.”  God called Abram away from “the way things work” to deliver him a promise he did not earn or deserve. God’s work in this story is small and slow and quiet. It’s not a power move that took over an entire people by force or by might. He spoke to Abram and granted him faith.

This was not a call for Abram to rise-up into the man he knew lived inside of him. This was a calling away from everything that might have propped up Abram from inside and outside of himself. This was a calling that had nothing to do with Abram’s greatness; rather a discovery, a faith, given as a gift from God. Abram is gifted faith to see that God is God, who gives righteousness.  It’s not earned or worked for. It’s freely given. God is a God who works in and through people, so that people bless people, who bless people through the word of God’s promise of love and faithfulness.  And that promise is for all people. Not just one person, or one ethnic group, or one nation.  God says his love is for the whole world. This is a whole different vision for family than Abram, or you and me, could ever envision without the vision of God.

Systems of oppression, such as the racism we have built in our society, are not built with the vision of God for human flourishing.  God, put to death in us the “way things work,” so that we can live with freedom and justice for all.  Give us wisdom and faith to unlearn who we are, to learn who you are, and how you create and make family. 

   

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