One of the Revised Common Lectionary’s Old Testament lessons in June is on Abram and Sarai. If the Lord told you to do something, would you do it if you were 75 years of age? How about if God told you to pack up all your possessions and go where he tells you to go and stay in tents?

I love to camp, but at my age, I would prefer that I do it in a trailer or mobile home. I would miss having hot and cold running water. In the desert, there are no washers or dryers or stoves. You wash your clothes in a stream and cook over an open fire.

God spoke to Abram and promised him that he would become “a great nation” if he did what he was told to do (Genesis 12:2 NIV). Abram and Sarai believed and did what God told them to do. God told him that if he did this, he would be blessed. He also said that whoever blesses you, God will bless, and whoever curses you, God will curse (vv. 2-3). By praying for him, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Abram took his wife and his nephew Lot along. They set forth to go to the land of Canaan. When they arrived, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem. “The Lord appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So, he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him” (v. 7). He moved on to the hill country near Bethel and “pitched his tent…With Bethel on the west and Ai on the east, there he built an altar to the Lord and invoked the name of the Lord” (v. 8). This was done in stages. When he took his household with him, we are not just talking about taking Abram, Lot, and Sarai. I said they took their livestock, their servants, and all their possessions.

Perhaps it would have been better if things happened more quickly, but when we wait upon the Lord, it is by his time not ours. But, beloved, do not forget this one thing: that “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (II Peter 3:8 ESV). Peter reminds us that God is eternal. But we are not.

If we take it literally and we say Jesus was born 2026 years ago, do you realize that is only two plus days to God? God is always working on things for everyone. Despite our faith, we need to keep waiting for God to act, even if it is not immediately in our time frame and understanding. In the process, there are times when we change the circumstances, which delays things even more. Abram was told to take Sarai; I am not sure God planned for Lot to go along with them. So, God had to make some changes in the plans he had. When things did not happen in their timing, Abram and Sarai then brought their own circumstances into the equation. More things got delayed. Finally, Isaac came along and then Israel or Jacob. The people then went to Egypt, until they were freed. It still took them forty more years until the promise was fulfilled.

God has a plan for every one of us. God will also fulfill our calling in God’s time, not ours.

Then the hardest part we have to face is to have patience to keep waiting so that we will be able to be blessed, and be a blessing to others.

Pastor Katherine A. Behrens, Picture Rocks-Tivoli United Methodist Charge