A different route

Friday, January 7

A different route

Exhorting them to continue in the faith, and saying, “We must through many tribulations enter the kingdom of God.”  Acts 14:22

There was famine in the Promised Land to which Abram had been called and into which he had entered by faith. We might expect that “milk and honey” rather than severe famine would have been the order of the day. Not so, for we know that as followers of Christ we are not immune to the common trials of life. Often we need to be reminded of this “We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

“Abram went down to Egypt . . . ”; it was surely a backward step, however sensible it may have appeared from a natural viewpoint. When we read the story in its entirety we understand that Abraham went down to come back up. It would have been better to walk by faith in the famine but, Joseph Parker a scholar says, “Abram could trust a whole destiny to the Lord, but not a particular circumstance in the process.”

In the end, Abraham did win. Why? Because God has the final say “But the Lord inflicted serious diseases on Pharaoh and his household” (Gen. 12:17). So God cares for his own, even when they go down to Egypt, “because God has said, ‘Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you’” (Heb. 13:5).