17 February 2010 Devotion for Today "In Memory of My Dad" Genesis 12:1-4

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

2:05 PM

 1 The LORD had said to Abram, "Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go to the land I will show you.

 2 "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.

 3 I will bless those who bless you,

       and whoever curses you I will curse;

       and all peoples on earth

       will be blessed through you."

 4 So Abram left, as the LORD had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he set out from Haran. 5 He took his wife Sarai, his nephew Lot, all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Haran, and they set out for the land of Canaan, and they arrived there. (Genesis 12:1-4)

 
 

This is a call to Travel with God.

 
 

God invites on a journey. One that will be long and difficult. This will be an uncomfortable journey. One that require everything Abram can must over the remainder of his life. But I'd like you to notice a few things.

 
 

Abram doesn't speak, at least not yet, in this story. He offers no ideas, no agendas, no plans, no solutions. God is the one doing the speaking and the direction. All Abram has to offer is his obedience and yielding of his plans over to God. Abram offers no excuses. Neither does Abram know the whole story or the road map of the entire journey, nor does he know the destination. Abram is called to follow. He is called, at age 75, (when most of us are in the full throes of our retirement years), to leave his homeland, his security, and everything he had grown up with and familiar and go to "who knows what?" Would we be as willing to do this? Yet Abram goes.

 
 

I have known a few like Abram in my lifetime. They are not the ones who are "set in their ways." As they grow older, they grow closer to the Lord. Every time you are around them you come away enriched, blessed, and with a full plate. They are always sensitive to the needs of the younger, willing to invest themselves into others and to divest themselves of selfishness. They always have you in mind.

 
 

Abram's call from God was one thing. But what about his wife? Wouldn't she have some say in this matter? Of course, that was a different day. But if Abram had lived today, his Sarai would be right by his side without him having or needing to ask anyway. She followed not so much because of Abram, but because of the God whom Abram trusted. She didn't need to be pushed, cajoled or demanded to do anything. Their nephew Lot also went with them- a young man so full of opportunity, but excited about the adventure.

 
 

I dedicate this devotion to my late father, Edwin M. Russell. He was a man like Abram in many ways. Like Abram he was a blessing to all of us. He was not afraid to take God by the hand and follow Him even if that meant giving up everything and starting over in a strange place. At age eighteen he joined the United States Navy at the beginning of his grand adventure. That was pretty much our lives anyway, at least when we followed dad around in his navy career. It wasn't much different after he entered the civilian world at age forty- there was always a new adventure, a new corner to be turned, a new lesson to be learned, a new challenge by faith to be shared. At age fifty, dad entered the adventure of illness and learning by faith what it meant to trust God when nearly all of his doctors had all but given up hope on him. At age sixty, when most men take up the golf clubs and the fishing poles, my dad did not retire, but instead embraced a new vision, by faith, of a business enterprise which would long provide for my mother and his family. He did not get to see age seventy, but like Abram, dad saw the promise fulfilled of everlasting life- a newer adventure still. When you live by faith you never get old. This new adventure Dad embarked five years ago today when he went home to be with the Lord. I look forward to being with him one day. But even then, he will be busy enjoying the new work that Christ has lined up for him there. I hope that I will be able to keep up with him then- I know I could scarcely do it when he was here on earth. Thanks, Dad, for showing us what it meant to live by faith, and to look to a vision greater than yourself, and for instilling that in me. I only hope I will live to be as faithful as you were to my mother, to my family and to my Lord.

 
 

Have a blessed day!