We all long for home.
Deep down, every one of us has a homesickness that nothing in this world quite satisfies. I’m not just talking about a familiar place or a return to childhood memories. We long for something permanent, something whole. A place where we belong. A name that lasts. A peace that doesn’t unravel. Shalom.
You see it show up in all kinds of places. “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” It’s in our music. It’s even in our games. America’s pastime, after all, isn’t about conquest or obliterating your enemy. Baseball is fundamentally a game about making it back where you started. You leave home, you face danger, you risk failure—you round the bases, all in hopes of returning. That’s when the cloud of witnesses filling the stadium celebrates: you made it home.
That’s not just a sentiment from a Ken Burns documentary. It’s a reflection of how we were made. We go out into the world—we work, we build, we strive—but deep down, we’re all trying to get home. And it’s not just a house we’re looking for. It’s something bigger. Eden, maybe. Paradise. Or something like it. A place of rest and joy and presence. That aching for a place of our own is built into us.
I felt it recently while visiting Mount Vernon, Virginia, when I stood in front of George Washington’s tomb—simple, unadorned. You may know that many wanted to bury our Founding Father in the city across the river from here that bears his name. But Washington refused. In his will, he asked to be buried at home, laid to rest beside his wife Martha, in the soil that had known his footsteps.
“Baseball is fundamentally a game about making it back where you started.”
You hear the same instinct in my favorite novel, Lonesome Dove. When Gus McCrae dies, his final request to his friend is simple: “Bury me in Texas.” So his friend Call hauls Gus’ body across rivers and deserts, back to the land where Gus felt most alive. It’s all about home.
And this is also the great theme of Scripture, the arc of the biblical metanarrative.
The Biblical Metanarrative
The Bible opens in a garden. Eden. A home not made with human hands but spoken into existence by God. It had beauty, order, fruitfulness, and most of all, fellowship. It was personal. It was home.
But we lost it.
Sin broke everything. And the tragedy isn’t just that we left Eden. It’s that we can’t go back home. Death bars the gates.
Genesis tells us that when Adam and Eve were exiled from the garden, God placed cherubim at the entrance with flaming swords turning every direction to guard the way back to the Tree of Life. You can’t return home by your own path. You don’t just stroll in. The way is blocked. Guarded.
Sin didn’t just damage our relationship with God—it made us incapable of restoring it. We might ache for home, dream of a better life, even try to recreate Eden in our own strength. Every utopian fantasy is just that. The bridge is washed out. And no amount of progress, planning, or politics will fix it.
The world says otherwise, of course. Our culture tells us that if we just keep advancing—smarter technology, more freedom, fewer constraints—we’ll eventually solve the human condition. And if earth doesn’t work out? Well, we’ll build a new Eden on Mars, I suppose under the misapprehension that we can leave our brokenness behind by changing planetary zip codes.
But the Bible says: the problem isn’t out there in the world where we’ve been exiled. Rather, it’s who we are. We’re not sinners because we sin. We sin because we’re sinners.
“We’re not sinners because we sin. We sin because we’re sinners.”
That’s exactly what we see when we look at Genesis 11—in the story of Babel.
After the flood, humanity comes together in one place. They decide to build a city, a tower, and a name for themselves. You can hear the desperation in their words: “Let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be scattered across the earth.” (Genesis 11:24, ESV). They want stability. Permanence. Identity. In other words, they want what we all want: a place to belong and endure. They want to make a home for themselves.
But we wanted it without God.
So we build. And the tower rises. A kind of anti-Eden: not a gift from God, but a grasp for power. But instead of unity, the result is confusion. And instead of home, they get exile. And the very name “Babel” comes to mean babble, nonsense.
Now by the end of Genesis 11, the story about us that Genesis tells feels like it’s spiraling in hopelessness. Humanity is divided, rebellious, and lost. The flood of Noah didn’t solve the problem of sin, merely watered it down. Subsequent generations go right back where Noah’s neighbors left off.
You might expect God to fix things with a grand display—some political fix or cosmic flash to set the whole world right in an instant.
But instead He calls one man.
And that’s how history turns.
Not through a mass movement. Not through a new political order or global reset. Just one man. A wandering Aramean in a pagan city.
God Calls Abram Out of Ur
God chooses one person, Abram. “Go,” God says, “to the land I will show you. I will make your name great. I will bless you. And through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed” (Genesis 12:1-3, ESV).
Isn’t it interesting that what God offers to Abram is exactly what the people of Babel were grasping for: a name. A future. A lasting legacy. A place. But now, it’s not seized—it’s offered. It’s given. It doesn’t come from below; it comes from above. God isn’t endorsing Abram’s greatness—He’s initiating a plan of grace. Salvation won’t come through ambition. The way home will come through faith.
And that’s how God has always worked with the human family. Not through mass movements, but through men and women who will take Him at His word.
By the time God speaks to Abram in Genesis 12, he’s seventy-five years old.
Let that sink in for a moment. The man we call the father of faith—the one through whom the whole plan of redemption will unfold—starts his story with geriatric gusto.
There’s no real back story for Abram in Scripture. No youthful exploits. No coming-of-age arc. Just a name in a genealogy. A husband. A nephew. A father’s household. He’s not a priest or a prophet or a scholar. He’s just a man living in the city of Ur.
And what a city it was.
Ur was one of the first great cities of the ancient world. It sat along the Euphrates River near the coast of the Persian Gulf—though that coastline has since shifted inland, near the present day city of Nasiriyah in modern Iraq.
“That’s how God has always worked with the human family. Not through mass movements, but through men and women who will take Him at His word.”
But in Abram’s day, Ur was a city of stone and mathematics, of law codes and libraries. There were schools, bureaucracies, canals, gardens, and temples. In other words, this wasn’t a backwater town. This was ground zero of human civilization.
And in many ways, Ur was the best city that man could build—without God.
Ur was a center of culture and commerce, but also a center of pagan religion. Its chief deity was Nanna, the moon god. The city was filled with idols—shrines, rituals, priesthoods. It was ordered and efficient, but spiritually empty.
According to Jewish tradition, Abram’s father, Terah, was an idol maker. Not just a worshiper of false gods—but a craftsman of them. Rabbinic stories go so far as to say that a young Abram once smashed all the idols in his father’s shop and left a hammer in the hands of the largest statue, and then said, “He did it.” When Terah objected that no idol can actually do anything like that, Abram replied, “Then why do you worship them if they can’t even move?”
Now, is that historically provable? Maybe not. But it captures something true about the environment Abram came from, a lineage of idolaters.
And yet God called him.
Out of the noise of empire, out of the shadows of clay gods, out of the machinery of early civilization—God spoke. Not to the king. Not to the priest. Not to the powerful. But to one man. An old man. With no children. No status. No future to speak of.
And He said, “Go.”
Think about the strangeness of that.
“Out of the noise of empire, out of the shadows of clay gods, out of the machinery of early civilization—God spoke.”
Abram had already uprooted once. Genesis 11 tells us that his father Terah took the family from Ur and set out toward Canaan. But they never made it to their destination. They stopped halfway, in a place called Haran. Another city. Another center of trade, comfort, and false religion. And there they stayed for a time.
We don’t know why.
But here’s what’s striking: even in a world overshadowed by idolatry—even in a household that “served other gods” (cf. Joshua 24:2, ESV)—there remained in Abram a flicker of something older.
It’s as if Abram had inherited a deep spiritual instinct—not from his father, but from the God who made him. He didn’t yet know Yahweh by name. He hadn’t received the covenant. But something in him stirred at the original call embedded in all of us: you were made for a journey home.
And then, in the middle of that Abram’s life, God speaks.
“Leave,” He says. “Leave your country. Leave your people. Leave your father’s household. Go to the land I will show you.”
Just go.
At seventy-five.
That’s not how we plan things. We want five-year goals. We want clarity, certainty, control. And God gives the man of faith none of it.
All He gives him is a promise: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing…In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed” (Genesis 12:2-3, ESV).
“Just go. At seventy-five.”
Now remember Babel?
Just one chapter earlier, the people said, “Let us make a name for ourselves” (Genesis 11:4, ESV). And God scattered them.
Now, to one man, God says, “I will give you a place. I will make your name great.”
What the human family tried to take by force, God offers by grace.
What they built with bricks, God builds through faith.
This is the the scandal of particularity. That God chooses one man. One family. One story. That the Creator of the stars and galaxies would begin again—not through a system, but through a relationship with one person, an old man in a young world.
He had no heirs. His wife was barren. He had no blueprint. He didn’t even know where he was going.
But he went.
Because God called.
That’s how salvation history begins—not with the strength of man, but the weakness of obedience.
And listen—maybe that’s exactly what you need to hear.
You might feel like your best years are behind you. That the future belongs to someone else. That your story has slowed down, and that you’re far too long in the tooth to make it home.
But the call of God doesn’t come on our schedule. It comes when it comes.
And when it comes, the only right answer is to go. To believe that God knows what He’s doing. To trust that your name—however ordinary—can be caught up in something eternal.
That’s what God did with Abram.
God makes a covenant.
Not a popular word these days, but a covenant is the glue of lasting relationships.
“A covenant is the glue of lasting relationships.”
In Genesis 15, God takes Abram outside and says, “Look up at the sky and count the stars—if indeed you can count them… So shall your offspring be.” And Abram believes Him. That’s key. He doesn’t argue. He doesn’t laugh. He believes.
And then something even more mysterious happens.
God tells Abram to bring a heifer, a goat, a ram, a dove, and a pigeon—animals used in ancient covenant ceremonies. Abram cuts the animals in half and arranges them opposite each other. This was standard in the ancient Near East. In covenant-making, both parties would walk between the pieces as if to say, “If I break this promise, may it be done to me as it was to these animals.”
But then, as night falls, Abram falls into a deep sleep. And while he sleeps, he beholds a vision of a smoking firepot and a blazing torch—symbols of God’s presence—which pass between the animal carcasses. Abram never walks through.
Only God does.
God is saying, “I’m taking the full responsibility. I’m making the promise. I will be faithful—no matter what.”
God Makes Covenant
It’s not a two-way bargain. God takes full responsibility for the covenant. And that’s what separates the faith of Abraham from every other religion of the world.
See, every religion in the ancient world—and today—operates on a transactional model. Offer the right sacrifices, say the right prayers at the right time of day, appease the right gods, and you’ll get blessed. Scratch their backs, and maybe they’ll scratch yours.
But the God of Abraham doesn’t work that way. He doesn’t say, “Perform and I’ll accept you.”
He says, “Trust me. Walk with me. I’ll be faithful.”
Listen, God doesn’t save the world through religion. He saves it through relationships.
And that revelation changes everything.
It means God isn’t some distant deity waiting to be bribed. He’s a covenant-making, promise-keeping God who steps into history, who binds Himself to His people, and carries the weight of the relationship—even when we don’t.
We live in a world trained to think transactionally. Everything is measured in cost-benefit analysis. Marriages. Friendships. Churches. If the relationship isn’t working for me, I cancel the subscription. If someone offends me, I disappear. If I’m made to feel uncomfortable, I’m gone. We know how to consume but not how to commit.
We bring what Tim Keller called a butcher-shop mindset into relationships: “I’ll come back to this counter if the cut is quality and price is acceptable, but I’m under no obligation to purchase from the same place every time.”
But you don’t build intimacy at a butcher shop. You build it in a covenant. Not with customers. With family.
And that’s the crisis of today, isn’t it?
“If the relationship isn’t working for me, I cancel the subscription.”
Marriages dissolve—not just because of infidelity, but because of fragility. Churches fracture—not just over heresy, but over hurt feelings. We have learned to expect ease.
But the Bible warns us what happens to a people who forget covenant. Psalm 15 says the righteous one keeps his oath even when it hurts. Ecclesiastes 5:5 (ESV) says, “It is better that you should not vow than that you should vow and not pay.” And 2 Timothy 3 describes the last days as a time when people will be “lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God” (verses 2–4, ESV). The Greek word translated “without love” is astorgos—it means covenant-breaking, without natural affection or loyalty.
And when covenant disappears, society cracks. Homes break. When faithfulness dries up, the foundation splits.
You can’t build a stable world on preferences. You build it on promises. And not the kind you make casually—but the kind you keep even when it hurts.
Your Calling
That’s what God does for Abraham.
And the same God who called Abraham has a call on your life.
Now, I’m not saying you should expect God to wake you up tonight and whisper in your ear that He’s about to make you the patriarch of a new civilization. But I am saying: God still speaks. He still leads. He still calls.
Sometimes that call is dramatic. Most of the time, though, it’s a still, small voice. A stirring in the spirit. A longing for home. A burden on your heart. A door opening when you weren’t even knocking.
So let me speak plainly. In what places in your life is the Spirit of God whispering to you, Go…Leave your comfort?
Maybe it’s a calling to church leadership?
Maybe you feel unequipped. But remember—elders, deacons, and ministry leaders all have an expiration date, even the best of them. Leadership in the kingdom of God isn’t something we inherit by default. It’s something we prepare for with purpose. I think of those in my congregation who are currently enrolled in Bible courses through RenewU—because they’re answering the call to grow. As Paul writes in 1 Timothy 3:1 (ESV): “If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task.” That’s not selfish ambition, but spiritual aspiration. It’s calling.
“Leadership in the kingdom of God isn’t something we inherit by default. It’s something we prepare for with purpose.”
Is the God of Abraham placing even a seed of that calling in you?
Don’t dismiss it. Don’t drown it out with busyness. Don’t bury it under excuses. Get your house in order. Get your spiritual life in shape. Let the Holy Spirit cultivate in you the heart of a shepherd, the humility of a servant.
Or maybe He’s calling you to go to another city, or another country. Maybe the call on your life is to be a missionary.
Not all of us will be called to go far. But all of us are called to go somewhere. To leave behind comfort and control in order to follow the God who calls us forward to something better.
Stuck in a Waypoint
But before we move on too quickly from Abraham’s call, we need to go back and notice something—something that’s easy to miss.
Abram didn’t start in Canaan.
He didn’t even start in Haran.
He started in Ur.
But somewhere along the way, his family stopped short.
As we’ve already seen, Genesis 11 tells us that Abram’s father Terah set out from Ur of the Chaldees to go to the land of Canaan—but they never made it. They stopped in Haran. Another settlement. Another place of comfort and commerce and compromise.
They weren’t in the land God intended for them, but they weren’t in Ur anymore either. They were in-between. Not where they had been, but not where they were called to be.
Haran was, for Abram, a halfway point.
And maybe that’s where some of us are.
You’re not in the world anymore—you’ve left Ur behind, in that sense. You believe in God. You’ve taken some steps of faith. Maybe you were raised in church, baptized as a young person. You’ve inherited the language, the customs, the convictions. But if you’re honest, you’ve stopped short of full surrender.
You’re dwelling in Haran.
And it’s easy to do. Haran feels safe. Haran feels religious. Haran feels like enough.
But it’s not Canaan. It’s not home.
It’s not the place of promise.
It’s not the life God is calling you to.
“Haran feels safe. Haran feels religious. Haran feels like enough. But it’s not Canaan. It’s not home.”
Listen—maybe you inherited faith from your parents or your grandparents. Praise God for that. But eventually, God speaks directly to Abram. Not to his dad. Not to his uncle. Not to his grandfather. To him.
And what God says is simple: “Go.”
Go from your country. Go from your people. Go from your father’s house. Leave Haran behind and follow Me into a future you can’t yet see.
Why?
Because God was calling Abram—not just to leave Ur—but to reach Canaan.
Listen, when God calls you, what He’s leading you toward will always outshine what you’ve left behind.
As Jesus said, “Everyone who has left houses…for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and inherit eternal life” (Matthew 19:29, ESV). But you have to pick up your cross and follow Jesus.
You weren’t made to merely inherit the faith of your ancestors. Like Abraham, genuine faith is always firsthand. It may begin with the Witness of those who came before you, but it must be your own encounter, your own trust, your own obedience to the voice of the living God. God doesn’t have grandkids. Only children. You were made to walk with God yourself.
Hebrews 11 says that Abraham was looking forward to a city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.
Are you seeking that city? Or are you stuck in a halfway place?
Some of us have been in Haran for a long time. We know we’ve settled. We’ve made peace with halfway obedience. We’ve clung to comfort, to predictability, to familiarity. And God is stirring us to go—not to guilt trip us into moving forward in faith but to summon us on the adventure of a lifetime.
“Some of us have been in Haran for a long time. We know we’ve settled.”
You were made for more. More than just showing up. More than inherited routines. More than secondhand faith.
You were made for home, and that means you were made for journey.
And listen, that call may look different for each one of us. Maybe it’s a call into ministry. Maybe it’s leadership in your church. Maybe it’s a mission field you never considered. Or maybe it’s simply this: to finally say yes. To finally stop living someone else’s faith story and step fully into your own story.
Rounding Home
The call of God is not about arrival. It’s about obedience.
G.K. Chesterton once told a story about an English yachtsman who set out to discover new lands. He sailed far and wide, braving the seas, only to circle the globe and plant his flag—unknowingly—on the very shores of England. He had come home…through the back door.
Reflecting on this, Chesterton wrote, “The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”
That’s the journey of faith, isn’t it?
You follow the call. You leave behind what’s familiar. You risk, you obey, you walk by faith. And somewhere along the way, you realize: this is what you were made for. Not the land of comfort. Not the halfway house of Haran. But the land of promise.
You don’t just discover a new place—you discover your true home. A home not made with hands. A city with foundations. A name that lasts. A peace that doesn’t unravel.
And when you finally arrive, when the journey’s done and your feet touch that shore, it won’t feel foreign at all. It’ll feel like home—because that’s what it’s been about all along.
“It’ll feel like home—because that’s what it’s been about all along.”
So don’t settle halfway. Don’t stay in Haran. Don’t let fear keep you from obedience.
When God calls, you go.
Even if you’re seventy-five.
Even if you don’t know where it’s all leading.
Because every step with Him is a step toward home.
