Out of Ur: The Destination

Much of Abram’s life had been spent in between his point of departure and his arrival in Canaan. While the biblical narrative doesn’t give us many details about Abram’s in between, we do learn some valuable lessons that can be of practical help to us today.

First, Abram was willing to pull up the anchor from his hometown of Ur and begin a journey into the future. God had spoken to him ever so clearly and he listened to the divine voice.

Second, along the way Abram faced a distraction that led him on a detour. Like Abram, if we are serious in undertaking the journey of obedience to God we will find the path is littered with distractions that can become detours. The danger of those detours is that we can “stop and settle.” Once we stop and settle, it can be just as difficult to pull up the anchor as it was when we first set out.

Third, just because we stop and settle doesn’t mean we have to remain stuck. It just means it is more difficult to reset the course and restart the trip toward our destination. Distractions can lead to detours, but they don’t have to remain our final destination. We can choose to follow the path to the land of promise or settle in the land of immediate gratification, filled with its counterfeits and substitutions.

If you continue to read the story, you’ll find there’s no magical pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. Abram’s tangible sense of having arrived is still a long way off into the future. But some how, in the midst of his journey, he must have had the growing sense that his new destination was his true home. And when we follow God’s direction to our divinely appointed destination, we too may find the serenity that comes with being home in a way that overshadows all other stops along the way.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this brief series of posts on Out of Ur. If you’ve missed any of the previous posts, feel free to check out www.timdeatrick.com where you’ll find the archives to this newsletter and more. If you are enjoying the Out of Ur weekly email newsletter, forward it to a friend and encourage them to subscribe! Have a great week!