Me and Abe

"The LORD had said to Abram,

'Leave your native country, 

your relatives, and your father's family, 

and go to the land that I will show you.' " 

~ Genesis 12:1 ~ 

Me and Abe have a lot of similarities here. I'll get into these in a bit, but first I thought it'd be important to go over the differences we have. The first of these is Abe had a family during the time of this new direction from God. Clearly, this is noteworthy because Abe wasn't just taking off solo. The guy had a lady, kids, cows, stuff, camels, and definitely a posse of helpers I clearly don't have! It wasn't so easy for him to just drop everything and take off . . . but he did. 

Abe also was a guy, which obviously I'm not. It's not so uncommon for God to speak to the men back then. I personally like to think it's because guys are directionally challenged so God had to give them lots more pointers. Ladies? Well, we totally get it and God doesn't always have to speak for us to head in the direction of which He's wanting us to go. 

The other difference between me and Abe is that he was already in a desert region and pretty much was headed to the land of luscious vegetation. I'm from the land of vegetation and headed into a desert region. To most, this is not at all noteworthy but I feel it is extremely noteworthy. I'm leaving the beauty of Minnesota behind for the barren wasteland of Texas. Don't get me wrong, but I'm very excited for this journey. I'm just having a hard time with the idea of leaving trees and plants for sand and heat. Now for the similarities . . . 

Me and Abe are old. Yep. It's true. Granted numerically he's old-ER . . . culturally we're both old. This is totally fine with me because I really can't envision a "young" Emily leaving her native country. I think being old and moving away from your native country is really quite wise. I really think a lot of people could benefit from packing up and just going away at some point in their lives. 

Me and Abe are going on a nomadic journey. A nomad is someone who lives with a group of people and moves from one place to another. Abe, of course, is literally a nomad at this point. My situation is slightly different because the community group isn't traveling with me, but it's similar because I'm going from one place to another for community. Hmm . . . maybe that's a stretch, but I think it's similar enough. Anyways . . 

The final similarity betwixt me and Abe is that God called us both to leave the comforts of home and go to the land that God is gonna show us. What's really interesting here is we are both entering a foreign land. Abe went to the mysterious "Promised Land" and I am headed to "Texas," which is practically its own country and, therefore, a foreign land.

When a friend said, "You're going on an Abraham Journey," it stuck.