Traveling Light
18 Then Abram removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar unto the Lord. Genesis 13:18 KJV
Next month, Jackie and I will have been married 65 years. We are both closer now to 90 than 80.
I don’t think that we would be justified as thinking of ourselves as being wealthy. I remember that when we returned from our honeymoon (a week in Ludington), we put everything that we owned in our 1956 Mercury and moved to MSU. By the time we left that place to take my first career employment, our possessions had grown to the point that we required the addition of a small box trailer to carry our goods. We have moved a few times since. The last migrations required huge, fully loaded Bekins moving vans.
Hardly a day passes now without one or the other of us looking wistful and saying the word: “condominium”! I think that we would go ahead and move too, except that we have so much stuff! In order of weight and volume, I believe that most of what we have would come under the category of “brown furniture”. I think that we would have to move it because some of my friends who have tried to sell it before calling the movers, tell me that you can’t give the stuff away.
Our reference verse speaks of Abram. I find that folks generally have a slightly distorted understanding of who the man was. Most find it shocking to discover that Abram was NOT a Jew! His name means “exalted father” – yet as we meet him here, he has no children. It is true that Abram is to be the father of the Jews, but their father is Jacob, who is still two generations away. Before that occurs, Abram will be given a new name: Abraham. The name means “father of many” or “father of many nations”. The Jews are in him, and he is best known to us through them, but he is also father of many other peoples (including virtually all of the Arab world)! Additionally, Paul tells us that he is “father of all who believe” Rom. 4). His crowning glory is that he stands in the line of Christ.
Abram would come to move as the peer of kings! He would have his own army! His wealth would be immense! He held, by the promise of God, the deed to the whole country and yet we must believe that he travelled pretty light. I don’t think that “father” Abraham had a bunch of brown furniture. It was not because Abram / Abraham just loved tents. Nor was it because he just loved living in the open air. In fact, we are told that he preferred a “city” and “foundations” (Heb. 11). He travelled light because he knew that his real treasure and place was not in or of this world. His altars had greater permanence than his houses.
I was once young and am now old. I look back on a life blessed (or cursed?) with accumulation. None of the visible “things” that I have acquired will have personal value one nano-second beyond my passing. I would that I and all Bereans were more like our father Abraham!
George Moore
Elder Emeritus
