Leave Everything: Genesis 12:1-9

The LORD said to Abram, "Go from your country, your people and your father's household to the land I will show you."

Go.

No map. No destination named. No timeline. Just a command to leave everything—country, clan, family—and walk toward a promise.

Abram was seventy-five years old. He had spent decades in Ur of the Chaldeans, in Harran, building a life, accumulating wealth, establishing roots. Now God asked him to rip them all up and become a wanderer.

"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."

The promises cascaded: a great nation from a man whose wife was barren, a great name for a man who would have no fixed address, blessing that would overflow to others.

"I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you."

All peoples. Every nation. The narrowing focus of Genesis—from all humanity to one family, from Babel's scattered nations to Abraham's line—would eventually widen again. Through this one man, blessing would reach the whole earth.

So Abram went, as the LORD had told him.

He took Sarai his wife and Lot his nephew and all the possessions they had accumulated and the people they had acquired in Harran, and they set out for the land of Canaan.

A caravan of faith. Tents, flocks, servants, supplies—all of it packed and moving toward a land none of them had seen. Every step an act of trust.

When they arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land to the great tree of Moreh at Shechem. The Canaanites were already there—the land was not empty, not waiting for them. It was occupied.

The LORD appeared to Abram and said, "To your offspring I will give this land."

Offspring. The childless man received a promise about descendants. The landless man received a deed to territory he could not possess. Faith is believing God's word when nothing around you confirms it.

So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

Altars. Wherever Abram went, he built altars. Bethel. The Negev. Markers of worship across a land that was not yet his. The patriarch was staking spiritual claims in enemy territory.

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.

Called on the name of the LORD. The first time this phrase appears since Genesis 4. In a land full of Canaanite gods, Abram lifted his voice to the only God who could be trusted.

Then Abram set out and continued toward the Negev.

Always moving. Never settling. A pilgrim in a promised land, building altars and pitching tents, trusting that what God had spoken would one day be seen.