Abram, walking the land

Genesis 13:17

Go, walk through the length and breadth of the land, for I am giving it to you.

I see a city here.

Where there is no city, I see a city.

I see a people here.

Where there is no people, I see a people.

I walk the land now as a nomad, as a wanderer. My path goes up and down it, according to the instruction of my God, who told me to seek the length and breadth of it, to explore its boundaries, to gaze upon the beauty of it.

It is somewhat an inward beauty, or a potential beauty, the beauty of the land when my eyes perceive the shape of things to come, the shape of the promises which will one day bring to life a city, a people, brought out of me.

God asks me to see now, to look and see what is not, though it is. He is the God that calls what is not as though it was. He says, Abram, this land is yours, though it is not, but it is. He says and in saying it is.

This is the voice of God. The story I know is at the creation of all things it was that God spoke, and then they were. His voice is a thundering voice, a voice that twists the oaks and strips the forests bare, a voice that makes this very desert I walk shake, the land skip and dance. The voice of the God is powerful, by which we mean it effects what it speaks, or brings forth what it says. God's voice does not return to him empty! What he says he does!

When he spoke to me, it was soft, quiet, gentle in my ears. But that which is gentle is not weak. Gentleness is just strength apportioned rightly, for we call the mother's hand gentle, though it holds the infant securely. We say the husband's voice is gentle, though it speaks safety to his wife. God's voice was soft and gentle but it spoke with a steadiness that sprung forth into life some quality in me, something that I saw was lying in wait for that voice, something that arose in response to that voice in joy, longing, hunger! His voice spoke to me and though it was gentle it was inexorable, calling into life as his voice did on that first day when he said let there be light and behold there was light! Did he thunder then? Did he whisper? The strength or weakness in his voice seems to be contained not in the scope upon which he acts but according to the heart into which he speaks.

O Lord, you spoke and I believed your words!

Then there was silence.

Time.

Lord, I was seventy-five when you spoke to me. You said to go to the land you would give me and I went, but when I arrived, according to the word you spoke to me, I found the land possessed by others. You said that you would give it to me, but it was not mine. This simple fact, this contradiction was confusing to me. But then, it was not the first contradiction you asked me to live with, is it Lord? Also, there is the yet unresolved issue of you making me into a great people, something which all these promises seem to hinge upon, yet my wife's womb is dead, the hope of bringing forth life from her seems to have perished before you even spoke the words to me in the first place. What do I make of this, O Lord? This is to hope against hope, for a rational man in examination of these things scoffs and laughs. I will make you into a great people, me? Abram? Childless, hopeless, an man already old, wandering in a land he does not possess claiming to posses it? This seems foolishness, and I would, perhaps should laugh at it, but Lord, I heard your voice.

Time passes, time moves forward, and certain things dim, certain things fade. Lord, I falter.

What does one do with failure? Lord, as I walk this land as a wanderer I walk with you, you the one who made all things, the God who holds into place all things, you who are everywhere present, I walk with you in rememberance now, but I remember also my failure. I remember the shame of my weakness. God, if your voice brought me to life and called me forth into action, then it did not take away that deadness yet, that terrible flaw, the fear that can still take me. Lord, I lived for so long in that land of idolatry beholden to fear. When you succoured me that day with the gentleness of your voice I forgot my fear, I forgot the passivity of my former days as I strode out in the confidence of your power, the speaking voice, that which went before me and purchased for me what it said. I forgot the betrayals of my flesh, and when through the failure of the very land I walked into a foreign shelter, as the voice which brought me to life seemed absent and distant, what yet remained in me was exposed.

O Lord, the shame of it, because of who I am. Lord, the actions we take are exposing, for they come from us, revealing what is hidden. O shame, fear, the cowardice of my action. I am exposed. God, when you called me, did you know this about me? Did you see my failure, my terrible selfishness, my fearful heart of sin when you called me that day? If God calls the man, then he calls the whole man, from beginning to end.

How can your eyes even have looked upon me, you who knew what was in me, what yet remains in me, even if I didn't? Yet I am faced with the facts, that you did call me, that you did choose me from among all the men of this world, that you did make these promises to me, and that when you spoke, you spoke to Abram now, then, the past the present, the Abram of Egypt, the Abram of my past and future faith, the Abram of my failure. You called, and you spoke not because of what I am, but because of what your calling would work in me, the future hope that I would be changed, that out of me would come a seed that would be a blessing.

I see a city here, O Lord, a city that cannot be moved, a city that possesses the land, that is the land, a city with foundations.

I see a people, a people for you, a people blessed, a people pure, purged, made clean by the word you speak (in their uncleanness a spoken cleanness). I see them, though now I wander, though now my wife's womb is yet dead. I see them!

God, O Lord, I see them! They are not here, but I see the dim outline, as though in the reflection of a muddy pool, a people to brought forth from me, not from my flesh, though from my flesh. They will walk in the ways of God, and dwell in this land forever.

O Lord, not this land, this land remade. Your people will not be fitted for this land, but for this land remade, for you will remake them. The spoken word to them will call them in the weakness of their flesh, since we all posses this flesh in Adam, and from me will come the seed that will bless them all and bring them all and call them all into the land you have promised them, this land but not this land, a land I see in outline, a land that though I wander in, I know if I was in it I would be no stranger, because what is called forth in me calls out for it, longs for it, a place where your voice will be seen and known and felt.

I see them Lord!

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Genesis 12-13
Genesis 1
Romans 4
Hebrews 11
Psalms 29