“I Will Make You Into A Great Nation”

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.

Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. 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.

From there he went on toward the hills east of Bethel and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east. There he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Now there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to live there for a while because the famine was severe.

Genesis 12:1-10

So Abram went up from Egypt to the Negev, with his wife and everything he had, and Lot went with him.

Genesis 13:1

G.P.S. units are wonderful. We plug in where we are going and follow the instructions. But sometimes we are detoured. We may never know the reason. Maybe the road changed. Maybe the traffic changed. What started out as travel on a smooth roadway can be shifted at any time.

Abraham faced a mysterious detour when God told him, “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house.”

We don’t need to see the way when we stay close to the One who does.

Our Daily Bread – October 16, 2014