Bible Reading: Genesis 12:1-5,7
The Lord had said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you. "I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will 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 all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."
So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Harran. He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there.
The Lord appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land."
So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.
A Reflection
Abraham, along with his son Isaac and grandson Jacob are the patriarchs of the Jewish faith and recognised as great heroes of the Christian faith. They were also ordinary men who often made mistakes but knew the grace of God as they walked with him.
Abram, later renamed Abraham, was seventy-five years old when God called him. He and his wife Sarai, ten years younger and later renamed Sarah, were childless, and yet God promised that his offspring would become a great nation.
Age is no barrier to God’s purposes. Whatever your age, God still has plans for you, plans to bless you and to do something great in your life.
God’s promise to Abraham, to be the father of a great nation, was beyond Abraham’s control, yet God’s call on Abraham was remarkably ordinary. God called him to move house and to walk with him. In obedience Abraham packed up his possessions and, with his wife and nephew, set out ‘to a land I will show you’ which turned out to be the land of Canaan.
There are some things in our lives that we have no control over, there are others where we choose what we do. Let us choose to walk in obedience to God’s word and to his call on our lives, however ordinary they may seem, and let us trust God for the things that we have no control over.
God blessed Abraham, not for Abraham alone, but so that Abraham could be a blessing to all peoples on the earth. Abraham was part of God’s plan of salvation for the world. He would become the father of the Jewish nation and, through faith in his descendent Jesus, the father of the Christian Church. Abraham was blessed to be a blessing.
In what ways has God blessed you?
How might you use the blessings you have received from go to be a blessing to others?
A Prayer:
Thank you, Lord for your many blessings.
Help me to walk with you faithfully each day, and in so doing, to be a blessing to all those that I meet.
Amen
By faith we see the hand of God.
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