For the next few Sundays, the Old Testament lessons share snippets of the Abraham cycle. Abraham and Sarah (or Abram and Sarai when it all began), begins the archetypical journey of faith. Along the way, they learn the power and provision of God. They discover broken places in their lives. Sometimes they boldly follow God’s leading; at other times they hedge their bets. Through faithful actions and less than faithful responses, God never leaves them nor forsakes them.
The old adage is true, “Every journey begins with a single step.” It also is true that some steps are easier than others. It isn’t hard to move from my bed to the coffee pot. It is much more to step into a new school, a new job, or a new season of life. Certainly God’s call to Abraham and Sarah represents a difficult first step on their journey of faithfulness. Perhaps our familiarity with this story has desensitized us to the absurdity of what was being asked of Abraham and Sarah. God called them to an unknown location, by an unrevealed route at an unknown cost. They were to leave where they were settled, comfortable and connected.
This seems to be the nature of the life of faith. We are always journeying forward … forward into faithfulness, forward into the grace of God, forward in our discipleship. Such movement isn’t easy. Like Abraham and Sarah, we leave what is known and set out to what is unknown. In the process, we have to let go of what is familiar, comfortable and settled. This isn’t to say that our current reality is evil or even bad. Rather, it is a sense that God is calling us to something better.
Such spiritual traveling may cost us a sense of security in the short term. In some cases, we may not have a clear sense of our destination. While we might not have a map, like Abraham and Sarah, we have a promise. For them, the promise was a blessing for themselves and the invitation to become a blessing for others. The same is true for us. I believe that God is calling each one of us away from a familiar, safe, and secure “here” to an unfamiliar, but blessed “there.” Those who are willing to heed God’s call, who are willing to step forth in faith, they will experience blessings beyond their imagination and experience a closeness with God they could not envision.
As church leaders, this call may be about our personal spiritual practices. It may be a new way of doing ministry. In some cases, it may be a new vision of how the church shares grace with the community around it. Personally, I cannot imagine a sedentary time in my life – a time when there is no new growth, no movement forward, or no progression. I think that when I finally settle in life I will have died, whether I continue to live or not. I believe God is constantly calling us to move from the currently familiar to a deeper and more blessed unfamiliar.
With this truth in mind, I want to acknowledge some pastors of the Corridor District, who literally are on a journey from the familiar to the unfamiliar. These are persons who have served their churches well, invested in their community and shared their gifts. I hope you will be in prayer for them as they move to a new season of ministry. They are: Edgar De Jesus, Julia Alliger, David Harvin, Allison Lancaster, Heather Locklear, Farron Duncan, Jesse Baker, Roy Hilburn, Cassidy Salter, Tony Westbrook, Min Jae (Sandy) Kim, Denny Freeland, David Romero, Katie Distefano, Daeho Kang, and Cat Clyburn.
While their journey is clearly defined, I hope and pray that we all are on journeys into the true blessedness of loving, obeying and serving God.