Journey to Jerusalem Day 13

Monday, March 9 Genesis 12:4-9
4 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. 5 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, 6 Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 7 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. 8 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. 9 And Abram journeyed on, still going toward the Negeb.

We have here a brief travelogue from the life of Abraham and his immediate family, at the very beginning of his lengthy, late-life journey with God. Back then he was named Abram, and his wife was named Sarai. God would change their names later as the two came to see that their journey with God had changed their souls forever.
But here, at the beginning, all Abram understood was that God had told him to leave his country, his extended family, his father’s very house, and go to a land that God would show him.
Abram was 75 when he heard all this. In the austere, perfect economy of Biblical prose, all we are given to know is that Abram “went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him.”
Now what if God were to do likewise with you? Given you are reading this, he may have. Not that God has told you to do what he told Abraham—God has his Abraham. No, what I’m suggesting is that God has told you something different, something unique to your life, but he said it in the same way he told Abraham: turn away from what you have been doing, do what I am telling you to do now, and I’ll show you more later.
If this is so and you are doing what you have been told, God will change your name someday too, for he seems to enjoy giving new names to new life. If not, if like Lot you are just tagging along, reading this sort of stuff and watching the show so to speak, don’t expect anything more from God than Lot received.

Lord Jesus, thank you for calling us to follow you along the way. Give us new names to match our new hearts. Amen.