The Road God Opens

[Poem as Reading the Bible]

One day,

God called Abram from the silence
between yesterday and tomorrow.

“Leave your country. Leave your kindred. Leave the house where your name
has always been known.

Go— to a land I will show you.”

No map was given. No road was drawn in advance.

Only a voice, and the strange certainty
that a voice from heaven
can become a road beneath the feet.

So Abram went. He gathered his tents, his possessions, his memories,

and Sarai,
the woman who would walk beside him
into the unknown.

He left what he could see for what he could not.

Perhaps faith is not knowing
where the road ends, but trusting the One
who calls us to take the first step.

At Shechem,
God appeared again.

“This land I will give you.”

And Abram built an altar there, not to possess the land, but to remember the Presence
who had brought him there.

Then he moved on. Another place. Another altar. Another horizon.

The journey was becoming his prayer.

But the land was not always gentle. Famine came. The promised land became a land without bread.

And Abram went down toward Egypt, carrying his fear with him.

Even the one who had heard God’s voice
could still be afraid.

Faith did not make him fearless. It made him keep walking while afraid.

And through all of it,
God did not abandon the unfinished traveler.

For the promise was larger than Abram.

“I will bless you. I will make your name a blessing. And through you, all the families of the earth
shall be blessed.”

Not blessed to become greater than others, but blessed to become a blessing.

Perhaps this is the mystery of the journey: God calls us out of ourselves
so that we may become a home for others.

The road begins with leaving, but it does not end with arrival.

It widens. It gathers strangers, nations, generations, until one small tent beneath an ancient sky
becomes a doorway through which blessing
moves into the world.

And Abram walked on— without a map, without certainty, but beneath the invisible promise of God.

The stars above him were silent. The desert beneath him was endless.

Yet somewhere between heaven and dust, a new future had already begun.