June 30, 2026:

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“The Lord had said to Abram, ‘Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. And I will make you in to a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing‘” (Genesis 12.1-2)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

It is hard not to see God’s favor as conditional. In the call of Abram, God sets out the proposition of cause and effect. It is a conditional relationship. It is no less conditional that the instruction given to Adam and Eve in the Garden: “You may eat of any tree in the Garden except for one. Eat from that tree and you will surely die.” Yes, God had a plan of redemption and salvation if they did not obey. We might say that God always wanted such a plan in order to demonstrate His great love for His creation from the heavens to the earth to the caretakers. God knew that blind obedience is not an act of love. True love, God’s love, is a matter of choice for what becomes mutually beneficial between the creator and the created. The plan of redemption was being worked out in those who chose to follow God’s word and God’s call. Noah was one such individual. Abram was another. Abram responded to his earthly father’s directive to leave country, people and connections behind to move to Canaan. While Terah settled in Haran on the way, God extended the call to Abram. Abram accepted the call, as we know and have read, and went on to Canaan. It was an interesting and indirect journey, to say the least, but eventually Abram made it to Salem and Melchizedek. In the conversation between Abram and God, we hear the conditions by which God would bring blessing to Abram and to the world. As I suggested, it was a proposition of cause and effect. We do not hear the negative side of the proposition, as was the case for Adam and Eve and the caution of death. What we do know is that as Abram follows God to the land that would be shown to him, Abram would receive blessings. The most poignant blessing is that God would make from Abram “a great nation.” God did not say that He would make a great world (indicating one people, one nation). God did say that Abram would be blessed as a nation of people. I believe it would be safe to assume that the intention is a people who believe in God as Abram did. Of course, we do not know where Lot got off the beam and ended up in such a fix as in Sodom and Gomorrah. It seems a miss was as good as a mile when it came to that situation. For what it was worth, we know the story of Abram/Abraham and are familiar with his moments of poor judgment, too. Yet, God was committed to making a way for there to be a nation of God’s people (a specific population) to minister to “the people of God” (the whole population of the earth.) It is still in process even today effected by those who are followers of Christ Jesus.

That does lead us to the second part of the “blessing” promise. God first tells Abram that he and his people will be blessed as they follow God’s direction to the place yet to be revealed (Canaan). God may well have been speaking of more than geography since Abram knew that Canaan was the destination given to Terah to lead his family. The “land” that God may have been addressing was Canaan in specific but the “whole” of the land meaning “the lay of the land,” too. It wasn’t just going to be dropped in Abram’s lap like a neatly wrapped package. There was work to be done. Abram was, after all, a descendant of Adam who was “blessed/cursed” to make his life with a “toil in the soil” culture and climate understanding. It was not a works righteousness mentality for either of them. It was, however, the effort of righteous works by which they would be blessed and God would be glorified. There was more to this promised “blessing.” God informed Abram that he would be blessed to be a blessing. His name would be great among all the people. It would seem that the true legacy of faith and faithful living is to be a witness (a light to the world) that would attract and convince others to share in the blessed culture and climate of being a God follower. It would be the same proposition for the Church of today. It would be by the following of the “New Command” of Jesus that the community of faith would so love itself that others would desire to give up the old and put on the new. For Abram, this was not Judaism. Judaism wasn’t even a part of the human vocabulary. For Abram, it was proposition of being a faith-filled, faith-led and faithful people. That they would be called Jews was a descriptor of their proposed identity in the time just as we would learn the name of God as His proposed identity in the time of Moses. It gave a keener sense of direction. For us, it is not so much Christianity as is it a “people of faith in Jesus Christ.” The Church, as with Abram, was called to follow God and receive the blessings which come from doing that. As a consequence, they would be a blessing to the rest of the world and lead them to becoming a part of the God-Community of faith, hope and love.

TODAY’S PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.