Genesis 13:3,4 – “And he went on his journey from the South as far as Bethel, to the place where his tent had been at the beginning, between Bethel and Ai, 4to the place of the altar which he had made there at first. And there Abram called on the name of the Lord.”
I love reading about Abraham’s life in the book of Genesis. It is so representative of the Christian life. In today’s reading Abraham returns from an almost disastrous journey into Egypt. He fears that he will be killed because of the beauty of Sarai, his wife. He thinks that the Egyptians will take her and so he concocts a story to save his hide. He wants the Egyptians to believe he is Sarai’s brother. Seems to work in the beginning until God begins to plague Pharoah because of the bad arrangement in his palace. Abraham is scolded by Pharaoh for not telling him the truth and is escorted out of Egypt. He wanders back to Canaan, to the place God originally told him to go.
There are two key phrases in verses 3 and 4 that I want to lock into today. Abraham’s journey took him “…to the place where his tent had been at the beginning…to the place of the altar which he had made there at the first…” I think sometimes there is great value in going back to where our spiritual journey began and repeat the things that got us started in the first place. For some reason we as human beings still like to wander like Abraham. We get bored or complacent or we think we need a new view…I’m not sure what it is but we don’t like to stay put. So we pick up and move on, sometimes to near disastrous situations.
In 1969 the Beatles originally released a song titled Get Back. The oft-repeated chorus goes like this: “Get back, get back, get back to where you once belonged.” What tents or altars do we need to revisit in this new year? It may do us some good and it may rekindle something that God deposited in us long ago. Get back JoJo.