“YAHWEH said to Abram, ‘Leave your country, your family and your father’s house, for the land I will show you. I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you, I will curse, and in you all people of the earth will be blessed.’
So Abram went as YAHWEH had told him, and Lot went with him.
Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran." – Genesis 12:1-4
The Calling Of Abraham
(GOD
was calling Abram: ‘Leave; there is something awaiting you!’ And Abraham left. In our own day, economic necessity forces so
many immigrants to leave their country without knowing where to go or how their
lives will be affected.
Leave… for the
land I will show you. Abraham only knew that GOD wanted to give him
what he had longed for during his entire life and he welcomed this
promise. In spite of his age, he was
still able to hope for the impossible and this heartfelt readiness, or this
ability for rebirth, was more pleasing to GOD than any good works.
Leave your
country, your family and your father’s house.
Here we
have one of GOD’s first words in Sacred Scripture. This call to Abraham is still part of legend,
like the chapters of Genesis that precede, yet it is also the beginning of a
true history which will go on for centuries and which is far from being over:
the history of Israel and of the Christian people. We rightly call Abraham the father of
believers since the call that he received and his leaving for unknown lands is
precisely what happens to us when we begin to believe.
Leave your country,
your family and your father’s house. To many of us GOD is more
likely to say: “Let go of your own wisdom.”
Because if GOD is speaking to us, it is not to tell us what we already
know. GOD is testing us, HE knocks on
our hearts to see what the echo will be: will we be able to let go of our own
wisdom and enter into HIS plan? We
thought we knew our own worth and where we are to go but – what if GOD already
had plans for us; what if GOD already knew us better than we know ourselves?
It
was not Abraham’s initiative to leave. GOD called him and by doing that, GOD
liberated him. On account of sin, every
person is born and lives as if he or she were in a foreign land. Our own reality is hidden from us as long as
we are not rooted in GOD and in communion with HIM. Our religions and ideologies, products of our
culture, do not permit us to go beyond the limits of a world we make to suit
ourselves. To become aware of our vocation
we need GOD’s call and we need to be willing to get out of this vicious circle.
Faith
will never occur without separation which is why GOD foresaw it in each one’s
life: leaving our parents’ house, beginning to work, getting married… Faith
prepares us to face even more painful separations that will place us entirely
at the service of GOD. As believers, we
can never think that we have arrived.
Until the end of our lives, we are pilgrims, drawn by an ideal never
quite reached and always attentive to GOD’s signs to see where GOD is waiting
for us.
Abraham
rightly responded to the call of GOD who made beautiful promises to him:
therein lies all of faith and Chapter15 of Genesis will again express the same
thing. In the Scriptures, we find
founders and religious reformers like Moses.
We find the wise and wisdom books.
Yet, they are all women and men able to respond when GOD calls
them. The promises that GOD made to
Abraham are equally valid for all believers: thanks to them GOD’s salvation
becomes a reality for the world. This is
what Scripture says: in you all peoples of the earth will be blessed.)
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