Genesis 12:1 (MSG) - God told Abram: “Leave your country, your family, and your father’s home for a land that I will show you.”

At any given time on road trips, you’re somewhere between the place you left and the place you’re going. It seems we respond to long journies in at least four ways:

  1. Looking Nowhere. A state of resigned, if not frustrated, acceptance to the boredom of the journey.
  2. Looking Back. We long for the place we left.
  3. Looking Forward. We long for the place we’re going.
  4. Looking Now. We “seize the moment” and try to make the present place interesting.

The journey through life often feels aimless. You live, you work, you die. You try to have some enjoyment. But, in the honest moments, it feels hard and/or meaningless.

But there is more.

God called Abraham out of Haran to a faraway land (opening verse).

God called the Israelites out of Egypt to the Promised land.

And God calls us out of sin to his kingdom that’s both faraway and near.

What he did with Abraham and the Israelites may be a physical analogue to show us what things are like spiritually - like living parables.

When God created the earth, he simply called out to eliminate darkness:

Genesis 1:3 - And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

Today, he calls us into light through Jesus:

1 Peter 2:9 - [he] called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

John 10:27 - My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

When We Look Back

Abraham’s niece-in-law was called out of Sodom and Gomorrah by God and she not only lagged back from the group but she looked back to Sodom and Gomorrah when it was being destroyed. She became paralyzed:

Genesis 19:26 - Lot’s wife, behind him, looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.

Some of us live this life now - looking back to everything that’s been before. And we’re scared and don’t know what to do or where to go. We feel stuck in between two worlds.

Jesus, the chief shepherd, has some experience at re-animating people in the wilderness:

Luke 5:18 - And behold, some men were bringing on a bed a man who was paralyzed… [and Jesus] said to the man who was paralyzed - “I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home.” And immediately he rose up before them and picked up what he had been lying on and went home, glorifying God.

Another physical analogue. Jesus can heal physical things which is a sign he can heal the spiritual ones.

So he tells us - don’t turn around after starting to follow me. It’s going to paralyze you:

Luke 9:62 - Jesus said… “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.”

May God free us from our paralysis and may we keep moving by faith - pressing into the land he’s calling us to:

Matthew 16:24 - Then Jesus told his disciples, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”