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Thursday, July 23, 2020
Following to a Destiny
Abraham, spent his life searching.
We hear much about his travels and trials,
and the years of his pilgrimage.
We hear about his encounters with God,
and we draw our lessons from them.
What we don't seem to hear much about is the final end of Abraham's search -
the thing that motivated him to leave the wealth and comfort of Ur.
What was it that caused Abraham,
like a migrating bird leaving its nest,
to uproot his home and step out into the unknown?
In Hebrews 11.8 we read that:
he had a Call,
he had Promise ... a land to inherit.
Above all He had a Vision of a City not of earth,
a city built and fashioned by God.
Abraham's journey was not so much from Ur to Canaan,
as it was from Earth to Heaven,
from the seen to the Unseen,
from the temporal to the Eternal,
from the dwellings of man to the dwelling of God.
This, says Hebrews, was what he sought.
He sought through the days, months and years in which he was a pilgrim.
Even when he reached the promised land he dwelt there as a stranger.
For him there was no settled place of rest.
For him all of earth was but another step in the journey to a better land.
It is easy to lose sight of the preeminence of the spiritual element in the lives of the men of the Bible -
easy to see the revelations and events of their lives,
their meetings with God and their faith
to see things brought to pass.
But it is hard to see beyond all the earthly realm of their existence,
and to somehow capture in our spirits what they felt burning as a vision within.
Enoch "walked with God." (Gen. 5.22)
Abraham was called "the Friend of God" (Jas. 2.23)
And on through the Old Testament God's servants saw Him above all earthly things.
Their earthly journey only had value in as much as it related to the Heavenly.
As time passes and darkness descends upon our generation
the need is ever more imperative for the children of God to look
beyond the cloudy realms of earth to the Ever-Shining Light.
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Amen!
ReplyDeleteVery true! Our spiritual journey should be taking us further and further away from earthly aspirations and sensibilities (what we can see with our eyes, hear with our ears, collect in our bank accounts and tally at the ballot box), and guiding us toward heavenly ones, for therein lies the true power that will, in turn, effect earthly matters if necessary. God's power is quiet and peaceful, and it behooves us to remember that the most powerful man that ever lived never broke off a bent reed nor put out a smoldering wick.
ReplyDeleteAn aside:
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've read "The Book of the Jubilees" or "The Book of Enoch," or how you feel about extra-Biblical texts, but I found these books to be extremely interesting and informative, if true. They fill in some missing information that the Book of Genesis doesn't present, and, although not essential to the saving messages of the Bible, I didn't find anything in these books that contradict them either. I found The Book of Enoch most fascinating and also horrible, where Enoch was given the task and heavy spiritual burden of relaying God's message of judgment to Satan and the fallen angels. After reading it, I can understand why God took Enoch from his earthly body to his heavenly home without his having to physically die, thus showing much God appreciated what he did. God bless!