What if...?

Genesis 12:1-3

The Call of Abram

​ Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

I'm reflecting today on the Call of Abram and the covenant God makes with him. Here is something that I won't be sharing in the pulpit tomorrow:

Abram was a man who didn't have any answers as to what the future held but you would never have known that from his actions. He caught the scent of a promise of a better future and stepped out boldly. His actions shaped history for a whole people.

If Scotland elects to leave the UK next Thursday in the Referendum, perhaps, in our quest for a better Nation, we are not abandoning our neighbours in the rest of the UK to the ravages of unjust policies and ineffective politicians or to further decline and a widening gap between the rich and the poor (as have been just some of the accusations made),perhaps we are not abandoning our neighbours.

Perhaps we are leading them, by our example, into the conviction that there is another way, that we can make a difference, that things can be other than they are at present and that our communities, our Nation and our world can be a better place, where all are valued for who they are, where all are afforded opportunity, where wealth and resources are shared, even if that costs some of us a bit more.

What if our calling is not to fear the unknown (and, at this stage, an independent Scotland is very much an unknown) but, believing in a better future for all God's people, to lead the way to make that future a reality? To model a future that others will want to follow and, by our example, will be inspired to pursue?

That old Scots saying "Better the devil you know" serves to keep us sticking with less than we might encounter simply because we fear the unknown. Conventional wisdom urges us not to become foreigners, not to give up all that to which  we can already lay claim.

Abram modelled a response to God's call that took him from certainty to uncertainty, from a familiar landscape to unknown territory,from tentative options to bold faith. What if this is our time to do the same?