Genesis 12:1-4

Sunday, May 3, 2026

The Rev. Megan Collins

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Dave and I will be traveling at the end of this month for a trip to Olympic National Park in Washington. We are planning to do some camping, and we are also renting this little minivan with a mattress in it, from when it rains. (Dave and I’s idea of a vacation is a little weird). Then we’ll visit some friends in Seattle before we head back home. 

They say that when people travel together, there’s usually one person who’s just happy to go. Then there’s the other one, who has the boarding passes, the lodging reservations, the maps, the itinerary. That second person, is me. It's not because I have to be, or because Dave can’t plan it. But  because I am someone who really likes to have all the information. 

 I’m not a big step out into the unknown kind of girl. 

I’m more of a “let’s look at the street view on Google Maps and walk it digitally on the computer first” kind of girl.

This is why stories like the one we’ll look at today are, admittedly, hard for me. 

Today we’ll look at a call story in the book of Genesis and those usually go something like this:

God: Go.  God gives no information or map or plan. Just have faith, and go.

Person: Okay.

Now, if I had a call story in the Bible, it would sound more like:

God: Go.

Me: Why?

God: Just go.

Me: Go where?

God: To the place I will show you.

Me: Can you give me an address so I can put in my GPS?”

God: (Sigh) Just go then I will show you where and why once you’re there.

Me: Ummm, okay but what should I pack? Do I need a snack? Is it cold there?  Do I need a coat? How long are we going for? Should I plan to have someone water my plants while I’m away? 

I’m less of a blind-faith-go person and more of a detailed itinerary person. Like, I’ll go if God sends me, but I need a little more information to prepare. So these call stories in the Bible, these stories about people who stepped out in faith and just responded to God, with no real information or plan, they’re not easy for me.

Maybe they’re not easy for you either. Maybe you’re also someone who likes to know what you’re walking into. You want the details, the timeline. Or maybe you used to be a risk taker. You trusted people. You stepped outside your comfort zone. It didn’t go the way you hoped. So now you’re more cautious.  And then you read these stories in the Bible, that say things like “God said go, and they went” and then it says this is what it means to have faith. And that leaves you wondering: Am I faithful enough then? Could I follow God like that? But here’s what I think we’re going to see today.

First, the people in these stories, they’re not nearly as together as they sound at first. They ask questions. They hesitate. They try to control things. They doubt. They make bad decisions. They aren’t perfect. They’re more like us than we think. 

Second, for those of us here who like a plan, when we do have to step into the unknown, there is actually something we can hold onto. 

Today we are continuing in our Untitled Study Bible project. We’ll be reading the beginning of the story of Abraham. At this point he still goes by the name Abram, and it starts about like we would expect for a call story. 

Genesis 12:

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. ² 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. ³ 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 God calls Abram, tells him to leave his home, and his friends, and go to a place that is yet to be revealed. Then God promises a blessing, that Abram will be the start of a great nation. And then Genesis says, 

⁴ So Abram went

That’s it. No map. No plan. Just a promise.

God says go. And Abram, does. 

There’s no getting around the courage it would take to do something like this. Abram is clearly very brave. But as the story goes on, we see that even Abram, with all his courage to just follow God into a new place, had some moments where he struggled to trust God. 

We’ll dig more into the specifics of his story over the next few weeks, but here’s the general overview of Abram’s story.

So after God calls, Abram gets Lot, who is his nephew, and Sarai, his wife and the rest of their entourage of people and possessions and animals, and off they go. They prepare to take off into the unknown. But things get off to a pretty rough start. Almost immediately, there’s a famine, and they don’t have enough food, so they have to take a detour into Egypt. 

As they get into Egypt, Abram looks over at his wife Sarai, and remembers just how beautiful she is. But not in a sweet romantic way. More in a “they’re going to kill me to have her” kind of way. So he comes up with a plan. He tells her, if anyone asks, say you’re my sister. (Which, by the way, isn’t entirely untrue - she is his half sister). 

And Abram wasn’t wrong that she was beautiful, or that she would get noticed. They get into Egypt and Pharoah does in fact want Sarai, and takes her into his house. But then God sends a bunch of plagues and the Pharaoh puts together that maybe Sarai isn’t just Abram’s sister, and sends Sarai and Abram and the rest of them away. 

They travel a little while longer, but things are getting a little tight. Lot and Abram eventually have to separate because there are too many animals and people to stay together as one large group. Not long after, God makes an official covenant with Abram, which involves this crazy ceremony of cutting animals in half and a torch moving between the two halves of the animals, and God promises Abram and Sarai that they will have children. 

But Sarai doesn’t get pregnant right away, and they get impatient. So Abram and Sarai again take things into their own hands. This time their plan involves Hagar, their servant, getting pregnant with Abram to speed up this whole nation of descendants thing. 

Hagar does get pregnant, but then she runs away because things got complicated between Sarai and Hagar. (No surprise there). God visits Hagar, and there’s this beautiful moment where Hagar names God. Back to Abram and Sarai, even though they have been impatient, God is still with them, and gives them these new names. Then God tells them there is a specific way they can show how important the covenant between God and the people is to them, and that new way is circumcision. So all the men get circumcised on what was likely a very hard day for their neighborhood, and Abram and Sarai are now Sarah and Abraham. Sarah finally gets pregnant when she is super old with her son Isaac, which is the son God will later tell Abraham to sacrifice to God as a test, and then God swoops in at the last minute to stop it. 

So Abram, Abraham, is not perfect.

He has plenty of moments where he gets afraid, or impatient, or takes matters into his own hands. But what he is remembered for the most, is not all the times he doubted, but for his faith. Later in the New Testament, in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, it says:

11 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

And then it starts giving examples of people who had this kind of faith. People like Abraham. It says:

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance, and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 

⁹ By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents . . .

¹¹ By faith, with Sarah’s involvement, he received power of procreation, even though he was too old, because he considered him faithful who had promised. 

¹⁷ By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac.

This is how Abraham’s story gets told later, full of faith. But Genesis showed us that’s not how it felt when he was living it. And that’s not how it feels for us either, because having faith in a future we can’t see, that’s hard. 

So let’s try this.When you do have to step forward in faith,, when that time comes, and God says go, or when you’re just struggling because there is so much unknown in your life, don’t focus on what you can’t see, start with what you can.

Look back. Look back, at your life, and remember the times God was there:

The hard thing you made it through,

The peace that didn’t make sense at the time,

The phone call from a friend that came right when you needed it. 

The money that stretched further than you thought it would,

These are things you can see.

Remembering them can give you the courage you need, to face a future that you can’t.  The Hebrews passage we read looks back over the story of Abraham’s life and points out his faith. But maybe the point of this Hebrews passage is not just how Abraham was faithful

Maybe it also reminds us how God was faithful too. 

“By faith Abraham set out" because God showed him the way. 

"By faith Abraham stayed for a time in the land" because God provided for him.

"By faith Abraham, when put to the test, offered up Isaac" but God met him there. 

It turns out, the big story of our lives is not just about our faithfulness.

It’s about God’s. 

We don’t go just to go.

We go because we can trust the one who is calling us to. 

That call from God isn’t just for our benefit. It’s to be a part of God’s work in the world, to help other people, often in ways we might never have imagined.

When Dave and I first started traveling and camping together, it was back in the late 90s. We would often listen to a CD as we drove by a group called Caedmons’ Call and they wrote a song called Lead of Love in 1997. The lyrics said:

Looking back it is clear to me, That a man is more than the sum of his deeds

And how You've made good of this mess I've made, Is a profound mystery

Looking back You know You had to bring me through

All that I was so afraid of, though I questioned the sky, now I see why

Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain view

Looking back I see the lead of love

I liked the song then. It was a good travel song and had a sound to it that felt like mountain drives and nights in a tent. I understand it so much more now. It's God’s faithfulness, God leading us forward, in love, is what will see us through, more than our own faith or courage. 

I did a little digging this week into the guy who sang this song back in the 90s. I wanted to make sure before I shared his song I knew what he stands for now. There are a lot of Christian speakers and artists from the 1990s that I’ve since deleted from my playlists because of their positions on spiritual teachings that matter to me. But Derek Webb, who was the lead singer from Caedmon’s Call, can stay on my playlist. 

Webb recently said “If I’m not using the songs I’m writing for my prophetic voice, I don’t feel like it’s worth the time. My friend has on several occasions noted that ‘if you claim to be someone’s ally but aren’t getting hit by the stones thrown at them, you’re not standing close enough. Jesus had his reputation willingly ruined as a result of caring for, living with, and loving the most marginalized people in culture. If you wonder where the margins are, where Jesus would be standing, where the stones are being thrown, let me tell you without a doubt, it would be in the queer community.”

Webb released an album in 2025 called Survival Songs. He was inspired by watching the struggles of his friends and family in the LGBTQ community in a time of rising Christian nationalism, and anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation. So he released these songs.

These stories we read about call in Genesis didn’t just happen a long time ago.

God is still calling now. 

The singer from Caedmon's Call isn’t perfect. He has made plenty of mistakes in his life. But what he will be remembered for, is his faith. It seems he is still listening to God, and looking for that call in his life. 

God has a call for you.

A place you need to go.

A person  you  need to stand with.

A path you need to walk. 

Like Abraham, you can and likely will have times of doubt. 

You might struggle, or get impatient.  

But when it all feels like too much,

Look back at where you’ve been, and how God has been there, leading you in love. 

And then, go.