The Journey Inside
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country, And from your relatives And from your father’s house, To the land which I will show you;” Genesis 12:1 NASB
Go – Unfortunately, English translations of this crucial command obscure the depth of God’s request. In Hebrew, the verb is not “Go.” It is lĕk-lekā’ (lekh lekha), literally, “Go towards yourself.” Sacks comments: “What they really mean is: journey (lekh) to yourself (lekha). Leave behind all external influences that turn you into a victim of circumstances beyond your control, and travel inward to the self. It is there—only there—that freedom is born, practised and sustained.”[1]
While it is true that Abram traveled from his place of birth to a new land, God called him to more than geographical relocation. God called him to become someone else—to discover who he really was by releasing himself from the cultural and social expectations and find his way to himself as a servant of God. It is a journey most of us are experiencing.
Joe Steenkamp provides a caution: “Mostly our minds are preoccupied with the need to be in control at the expense of being and feeling alive.”[2]
“If you hold back on emotions – then you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them – you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid . . . of the pain . . . of the grief . . . of the vulnerability that loving entails.”[3]
God call Abram to detach, and the rest of Abram’s life is testimony to that inward journey. There are setbacks, temptations, failures . . . but always the press toward a different person than the one who left Mesopotamia. Centuries later, God calls another man to the same journey. Only this time, the man is asked to leave his experiences of the past, the identity that they molded, and make a return as a different man. Abraham is asked to leave the familiar and venture into the unknown. Moses is asked to leave the unknown and venture back to the familiar. In both cases, the trip peregrination requires passage through the wilderness. That should not be surprising. The wilderness strips us of our grip on the familiar. The wilderness pries us away from the bonds that hold our expectations. The wilderness is “God-territory,” where we don’t belong, where we’re strikingly aware of being out of place, where our fragility and dependence can’t be ignored. Abram is called to this experience in order for God to shape the father of the chosen people. Moses is called from this place in order to bring the people back to their reality of dependence. Either direction changes each one, inside out.
Perhaps you’ll discover which direction you’re traveling if you ask for a helping hand from the man on the same road.
Topical Index: go, lĕk-lekā’ (lekh lekha), wilderness, inward, Genesis 12:1
[1] Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, Covenant & Conversation: A Weekly Reading of the Jewish Bible: Genesis: The Book of Beginnings (Maggid Books & The Orthodox Union, 2009), p. 71.
[2] J. Steenkamp, SHIP: The Age-Old Art of Facilitating Healing, p. 173.
[3] Ibid., pp. 134-135.
“Perhaps you’ll discover which direction you’re traveling if you ask for a helping hand from the man on the same road.”
Who, pray tell, is “the man”, Dr. Moen (forgive me, I am obtuse)
Someone who is following God with the same intention leaving behind the same baggage.
Thank you, the definite article threw me. Those men and women are few and hard to find. That’s why I come to this community of believers, God has used the posts to enlighten me AND lighten my load from the aforementioned baggage. As I read the studies and the comments going back years and even decades now, I am encouraged and strengthened in the knowledge that the heterodox thoughts and beliefs I have are actually “heresy” in a good way. I read Drummond somewhere said, “…heresy is just the search for the truth.”