GodSprings - January 21, 2016

The Bigger Picture

This is the account of Terah’s family line. Terah became the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. And Haran became the father of Lot…But when they came to Harran, they settled there. Terah lived 205 years, and he died in Harran. Genesis 11:27-32 (NIV)

I recently saw an ad on Facebook about Channel 10 News. There was a woman sitting in a car. She's minding her own business, and suddenly this man comes out of the blue, rips the door open, grabs her, and pulls her out of the car roughly. It looks like he's attacking her, and we look on in horror. Then the camera pulls back, and we see that the car is actually on fire, but the woman didn't know it. The man wasn't assaulting the woman; he was rescuing her. The ad finishes by saying, "You need the bigger picture. Channel 10 News gives you the bigger picture." The ad makes a good point. We need to have the bigger picture.

Terah was the father of Abram, Nahor and Haran. Chapter 11 recounts hundreds of years of family lines down to when, Abraham, was finally born. This illuminates a key point in Abraham’s life and in the lives of all of us. Over and over again, the Bible begins a person’s story by telling where they came from, who their parents were and what land they originally inhabited. This is all to show that our story begins long before we do.

Before Abraham ever lay Isaac on the altar, before he married Sarah or traveled to Egypt or even heard the voice of God, God was planning his story. God knew He would bless the nations through this one man. He knew Abraham would be a very important marker in the long, beautiful story of human salvation. But God also knew that, as important as Abraham’s story was, he was still only a part of something much larger.

The story of Abraham tells us one truth: there was a before Abraham and an after Abraham, and the same is true for us. Countless stories have taken place to allow us to live at this precise moment in time. Countless more will be written after we are gone.

Our story is part of something infinitely larger. We are God’s children, God’s chosen. To God, we are every ounce as important as Abraham, and he will take care of us with the same amount of care and love and power as He did for Abraham.