Recently I rediscovered something my dad had shared years earlier about the coming time when he would have to leave the life he so loved. He described his fascination with Abraham, a man who had wealth, herds, land, servants and a good life before God came to him and told him to leave it all to go to a land God would show him. This was a call from God, but without very clear instructions.
Abraham took God at his promise and left, but Dad imagined that Abraham surely asked himself many times if it was really God calling him. There were times of trouble for Abraham but also exciting times when Abraham might have said, “What would have happened if I had not trusted God? Just think of what I would have missed.”
Dad wanted the text for his funeral sermon to be based on the call of Abraham (Genesis 12:1-4). “I would like to think,” he wrote, “that when the time comes for me to stand before that great mystery of the unknown, that I, too, may have the courage of Abraham and trust that God will be there, too.”
This message is excerpted from “My father’s pajamas” by Karen G. Bockelman in the June 2018 Gather magazine. Today is Trinity Sunday. Today is Father’s Day.
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