Once again, I ask you: Who leads your journey? Who leads your family? Who leads your city, your nation – who leads the people who are part of your everyday mortal life?

For Abram, it was his father Terah who led the family from the former Kingdom of Ur, part of the Kingdom of Sumer and away from the places of Sumerian worship of gods, away from the great Ziggurat built before his birth where the people of the Ur had built a great city to their own glory.

Gen. 11:⁴ Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.”

Abram left the country and city with his father and his family. The journey of over 500 miles to another land along the Euphrates. Terah may have lived in Haran over 100 years, but Haran was no great city as had been Ur. The fertile land around Haran was called Aram-naharaim, which is translated “Mesopotamia”, and refers to the land between the Balikh and Habor rivers. [source]

Genesis 12:

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. 2 And 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. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

4 So Abram went, as the Lord had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. 5 And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan.

To be continued…