Today’s Reading: Genesis 12:1-4

My grandma is one of the most adventurous women I know. She has traveled the world and has experienced remarkable things that I have only dreamed about. There’s one thing that my grandma hasn’t conquered, though: water. My grandma can’t swim. In fact, she can’t even float. She is utterly convinced that it’s physically impossible for her to float. No matter how many times we have tried to convince her and teach her to swim, she won’t risk it. You see, it takes a certain amount of faith to float. You have to have enough trust that everything will be okay to pick up your feet. Until my grandma takes a big breath and risks stepping (or rather, floating) outside her comfort zone, she will never have the adventure of swimming.

Each time that I read the story of Abram and Sarai, I’m amazed by their willingness to pick up not just their feet, but their whole lives when God tells them to. Talk about an adventure! They are moving away from everything and everyone that they know. They don’t have GPS or directions about where to go; in fact, they don’t even know where they are going! God says that God will “show them.” They are just to go and figure it out along the way. And that’s exactly what they do.

I’m not sure how often God calls people to give up everything and go (though perhaps more often than we think), but we are certainly called to trust and “pick up our feet” in smaller ways. Abram and Sarai’s story reminds me that we can’t plan out every twist and turn on this adventure of life. Sometimes we just need to have faith, trust the journey, and take things as they come. I wonder what our lives would be like if we surrendered control and truly allowed God to lead us. Where might the adventure lead you?

“It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
— Bilbo Baggins, Lord of the Rings