Dying Before the Journey Has Ended
Have you ever begun something that you never managed to finish? I doubt that there are many of us who can’t answer a resounding “yes” to that question. We sometimes conduct postmortems on why we didn’t finish a project. Oftentimes we’d rather not even discuss it! In Genesis 11 one of these unfinished projects comes to light. “ Terah took his son Abram, his grandson Lot son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai, the wife of his son Abram, and together they set out from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to Canaan. But when they came to Haran, they settled there .” (11:31, NIV) We often are reminded of Abraham’s call to Canaan and assume that he left from Ur to follow the command of God. Technically he did, but it was his father, Terah, who started the journey. From the way the text reads it was Terah who, for some unmentioned reason, packed up his family and headed to Canaan. Except, he didn’t finish the journey. We aren’t told why Terah stopped at Haran or why he didn’t get started ag...