Go, and I'll Show You

After the tower, the scattered families spread across the world, each with its own language, and most of them forgot the God who made them. Many generations later, one of those families was living in a town called Haran.

The head of that family was Abram. His father, Terah, had prayed to other gods, and Terah had died in Haran. Abram had a wife named Sarai, a nephew named Lot, a great many sheep, and no children at all. Sarai had never been able to have a baby.

Then the LORD spoke to Abram.

"Go," said the LORD. "Leave your country, your relatives, and your father's house, and go to the land I will show you."

"I will make you into a great nation," the LORD went on. "I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and curse anyone who curses you. And all the families of the earth will be blessed through you."

Abram went to find Sarai. "We're leaving!" he said.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Abram. "God is going to show us."

So they packed. They rolled up the tents, loaded the donkeys, and gathered the servants, the goats, and the sheep, who did not want to go anywhere, because sheep never do. Lot came too, with his own flocks. (Abram was seventy-five years old.)

Down the road they went, past rivers, over hills, through dust and wind, until they came into the land of Canaan, to a place called Shechem, where a great oak tree stood. The land was not empty. Canaanite towns sat on the hilltops, Canaanite farmers worked the fields, and Canaanite children stared at the strangers and their sheep.

There the LORD appeared to Abram. "I will give this land to your children," he said.

He thought of his tent, with no baby in it. He believed God anyway, and right there under the oak he built an altar. (An altar was a pile of stones for worshiping God. Abram lived in tents in Canaan and never built himself a house, but he kept building altars for God.)

He moved on to the hills between Bethel and Ai, pitched his tent, and built another altar, and there he prayed to the LORD by name. The builders at Babel had wanted the whole world to say their name. Abram spent his days saying God's. Then he packed up again and went on south toward the dry country, one camp after another.

Abram walked the whole land, and not one step of it was his yet. He left piles of stones behind him, each one saying, "I believe you." But Abram was one old man with a tent. He could not carry a blessing to every family on earth.

So the promise waited while Abram's family grew into a nation, and nearly two thousand years went by.

Then another traveler came, born into Abram's family. Like Abram, he left his Father's house to live among strangers, with nowhere to lay his head, and wherever he walked, blessing went with him. He even healed a Canaanite woman's daughter.

His name was Jesus. He died and rose again to bring that blessing to every family on earth. Then, before he went back to his Father, he gave his friends the word God once gave Abram.

"Go," said Jesus. "Make disciples of all nations. And I am with you always."