worship this Sunday…

Looking back, I don't think I realized when I left home for college that I was leaving my home for the last time. Heading out to college several states away, I was excited and optimistic about what lay ahead, but frankly, I don't think I realized when I packed my suitcases in the car and slipped into the backseat that it was the last time I'd be in what I had always known as home. When I returned to my home for a few weeks that summer, I felt something had changed. I felt like a very familiar and loved visitor, not like someone returning home.

Leaving home for the last time isn't always something that we understand as it happens. Sometimes it takes years or even decades for it to sink in what we left behind. We have a complexity of feelings … fear, worry, anticipation in the future that seems to unfold chaotically with every new moment. Leaving home for the last time is like nothing else. It's not sorrow or joy alone, but instead some sort of hopeful loss when you give up who you were to become who you will be.

This metaphor, what it's like to leave home for the last time, gives us a glimpse of what it means to truly follow God. Scripture has so many examples of people literally leaving home to follow God. The first example is of the disciples who are called at the Sea of Galilee by Jesus to abandon their livelihoods, their families, and their homes to follow him, and Moses is called by God to leave the desert, return to Egypt, and lead the Israelites to the Promised Land. Abraham, the first of them all, is the subject of our Scripture passage for this week. It is this story where we learn of following the call of God to step into the complete unknown. All of these significant biblical stories have but one overarching thing in common. They all begin by leaving home for the last time.

On Sunday we will think about the story of Abraham and what it might mean for us to leave home in our journeys of faith. Following Christ still might mean setting out to places and lives and even selves that we don't know yet, and to be prepared for the complexities of that life. See you on Sunday as we explore what it is to follow Christ today.

See you on Sunday,
Brent

Genesis 12: 1-9

Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’

So Abram went, as the Lord had told him; and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took his wife Sarai and his brother’s son Lot, and all the possessions that they had gathered, and the persons whom they had acquired in Haran; and they set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they had come to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the Lord appeared to Abram, and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built there an altar to the Lord, who had appeared to him. From there he moved on to the hill country on the east of Bethel, and pitched his tent, with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; and there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord. And Abram journeyed on by stages towards the Negeb.