Life is tough. I never thought I would be well past middle age and be such an abject failure. If you had asked me what my life would have looked like when I was younger, when Sarah and I started planning a life together, well I never would have predicted this. Here I am, basically an old man and I have no heir. Sarah and I have done everything we know to do to have children, none of it has worked. We have prayed to all of the gods we know, visited the holy men on their hill tops, paid for prayers and incantations -still here we are. No child and no future. The looks we get when we go to market, a mix of pity and scorn. Hints that we have brought a curse on ourselves because we are bad people. The idea that if good things are not happening for us it must mean we have done something wrong - is just flat out wrong. I hurt for my wife, she blames so much of this on herself, being known as “barren” is a terrible fate. A fate I share with her.

What will become of us? With no child we will have no ties back to the land of the living when we pass on to the grave. My name will be lost forever and I will have nothing to pass on to continue on in this world. Who will ever remember the name of Abraham? Maybe I did bring this upon myself. I had always thought that I was special in some way, destined for greatness and a lasting fame. Perhaps the gods have cursed me for my insolence and arrogance.

The gods? The gods of my father and mother, the gods of my people here in Mesopotamia - we carve them out of rock and wood.  We offer them prayers and sacrifice, and they do nothing.  Are they even real? What good are the gods when they ignore your hurt, and never answer your prayers. We have so many of them it seems that one or two of them could get busy and do something I could see or hear. Sometimes I think the gods are nothing more than a bunch of stories to comfort children in their youth and old people in their dying. What good are they to me and Sarah when we have no future but shame and despair.

My father Terah would tell me ancient stories, stories the neighbors did not like to hear. He said that a long, long, long time ago, that he heard there was really only one God. He said that one God made everything we know, and actually used to talk to the people he created. I wonder whatever happened to that one God? If there is only one God why does everyone here in the land of Haran have gods scattered everywhere. We have a god for rain, a god for crops, a god for cattle, another for goats, and still another for sheep. We have a god that makes it possible to have children. Sarah and I know that god well, only I think that god does not know us….I am beginning to think that particular god is not real at all, and if one god is false are they all false?  Forgive the musings of an old man but I speak from my long experience in this painful world.  Crops are sown and harvested by people. Cattle, sheep, and goats make other cattle sheep and goats all on their own. Sometimes it rains and sometimes it does not. Sometimes bad people do well and good people suffer. It all goes on without the help of any “gods.” And sometimes a couple just can not have children and the future is bleak with only death as final stop. The “gods” be damned because if they are real, they certainly do not care. 

Another story my father told about this “One God.” The old man said that this particular God not only created everything but did so by merely speaking. Maybe Dad has spent too much time out in the sun! How could a god have that kind of power to simply speak and things come to be? But then again, if this is true, this God must be a big deal. Speech that equals creation is an amazing thought….creating something out of nothing. I and Sarah know what it feels like to me nothing - I wonder what it feels like to be re-created from this nothingness into something? 

I was out there, past the river where the scrub grass grows foraging the sheep and goats when I felt something stir. I was alone but suddenly I did not feel alone. The animals were not skittish so why was I sensing that there was something big nearby? Was I losing my mind? I could feel it, but I could not see it. It felt dangerous and primal but also oddly safe - words cannot put my emotions into focus. I found myself talking to the nothingness, asking preposterously for the nothing that was something to speak. Then I heard it!  I heard a voice that was beyond hearing - a voice that imprinted on my soul and being, a voice that bypassed my ears and went straight to my heart with a truth that is now emblazoned on my being. This is what I immediately knew, the God that my father had talked about, the God one and only one God of all creation was speaking to me! The words fell thunderously without sound telling me in a flash that this one and only true God was back in the creation game, using me to create something new. I heard,  “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. 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. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all families of the earth shall be blessed.” 

This can not be true! Yet I know this is the most true thing I have ever experienced in my life. I and Sarah have been chosen to be a great nation. She will think I’m crazy but she will see the truth in this. We have to go, we can not stay any longer in this dead end life. We are being offered a promise of more than we could have ever dreamed. It is a promise I did not have yesterday that is suddenly a promise available for me today.