So Abram departed as the Lord had spoken to him, and Lot went with him. (Gen 12,4)

Until a man goes through the Jacobean struggle of faith, until he learns certain truths by "suffering" them — because certain truths cannot be obtained in a different way in life — he will be tempted to think of God in a human way and to view the path of faith as a walk on a pink cloud. The truth is quite opposite: the road leads through the desert. This does not apply to salvation by grace, which is free and concerns future things, but to the path of pursuing God on this earth. The effort to simplify it and find shortcuts will only lead into half-truths, imitations of faith.

We tend to read the Bible with pink glasses on our noses and then it seems like a handful of slightly naive stories with a happy ending. "Abram set out on a journey, as the LORD commanded him." How clear and simple everything is. But then we suddenly read that Lot, his nephew, and Terah, his father, are with him. But when God spoke to him, he told him clearly to leave "his country, his birthplace, and his father's house."

Abram did not suppose that he should take the statements of God so seriously and literally. He wasn't used to it, and none of the people around showed that level of reverence to their deities (after all, the idols didn't speak). But a number of experiences awaited him, which must have taught him - and that not without pain - that there are laws of cause and effect even on the path of following, and that he must take his new God much more seriously than he initially thought.

For Abram, the encounter with God must have been very powerful and simply beyond all that he had experienced so far. It was no vague feeling, no maybe, no short-term emotional experience. How can we be sure? Because if it had been just a momentary inner excitement, he wouldn't have gathered his loved ones and gone into the unknown forever, he wouldn't have burned the bridges. However, we can see from his actions that he was fully convinced of the reality of what he experienced and heard.

But it was not just an encounter with the eternal and overlapping that drove Abram forward and what the encounter with God brings. Although he achieved a lot in his life, he was absolutely not needy but nevertheless still lacked one thing: he had no children. Even nowadays it is not easy to live without fulfillment of the kind if someone longs for a child, but in earlier times it was a much more pressing issue. People were tied to the family and tribe more strongly than today both in terms of identity (almost all social relationships existed within an extended family) as well as practically. Having children meant the continuation of a tribe, but also security in an old age at a time when there was no social system other than the generational solidarity.

We do not know if Abram was the only one whom God addressed with a call to follow, for what if even here applies that "many are called, but few are chosen"? However, we can be sure that he was the only one who obeyed and really set out.

Hunger causes a desire for satisfaction. Our need thus becomes the door of the heart to God.

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. (Gen 12:1)

What can make a man like Abram get up and leave his homeland, his residence, his tribe, his extended family (which for ancient people was the center of the social life and often represented all their living space), all his certainties, and follow the voice of an unknown god into the unknown land? If we follow Abram's subsequent actions (we have no news about his life until then), we will certainly conclude that he must have belonged to higher, successful class. Obviously, he managed to deal with various situations, he was successful in business. He certainly didn't do badly in his homeland so far. What made him leave this life?

Even in the midst of external success, one can feel an unsatisfied longing for life. To meet the living God means to touch life in its most essential form, to know the all-encompassing existence outside the world known to him, to breathe in the purest air, the divine atmosphere ... When God approached Abram by speaking to him, at that moment the most important thing for Abram were not the words he heard (and we will see that he did not understand them fully at the time) but the hitherto unknown power of the eternal, all-surpassing being who completely overshadowed Abram's dead deities which he worshipped so far.

These are times when you feel that... compared to this reality, nothing else really matters.

Joshua said to all the people, “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘Long ago your ancestors, including Terah the father of Abraham and Nahor, lived beyond the Euphrates River and worshiped other gods. (Jos 24,2)

Abram and his ancestors were idolaters. Although it is clear that there was a certain awareness of God even at his time (there was at least the oral experience of Adam, Seth, Noah and others) history teaches us that if pure consciousness and knowledge of God appears somewhere, the revelation is gradually covered by a layer of profane vision resembling human understanding and is slowly but surely moving from the heavenly heights to the lowlands. For this reason, a restoring, cleansing word from above must be heard again and again, which reveals and awakens man (it is the precious RHEMA of Ephesians 5:26). Such word was brought by prophets in both the Old and New Testament periods.

It is good to realize that Abram did not know God at all in the beginning. His previous religion taught him to think of the gods in an habitual way. This included sacrificing so that they do not harm a man, provide him with supernatural protection (practically a kind of protection money), but even more, to bless him in his earthly journey. Abram had never experienced a deity speaking to him, having special intentions with him, calling him to higher paths, or pursuing distant aims. So far, everything he experienced with the gods took place in a regime of mutual exchange of goods, which both sides had at their disposal.

Fortunately, when the new, unknown God spoke to Abram to leave his family and homeland, he had no theology at the time with which he could agree or disagree. Otherwise, he would be in danger of explaining that God certainly did not want something so crazy from him, because He is not like that. But it was not a matter of Abram's approval or disapproval at all. It was just a matter of whether he would obey and set out.

Belief in the divine has taken many different forms in history. The primitive idolatrous approach took the existence of a deity for granted, the question being which god (idol) to choose for worship. The deities demanded worship and sacrifice, and in return they were to provide a man with various benefits and protection. The point was not, however, a search for the highest moral path or even a real transformation of man; moreover, the idol deity was a collective, tribal affair.

Such religions no longer exist in developed countries today (if so, only among people looking for extreme alternatives). But what does exist are various forms of agnosticism, deism and "something" - a belief there may be a God, but it may have virtually no effect on one's life, except for the vague feeling that there is "something above." Or he may call God a personal God, but that also ends with everything personal. Various religions resemble this, including Sunday's indulgent Christianity. The main thing is the answer to the question, "what is it that faith can give you?"

And yet, once upon a time, almost 4.000 years ago, there lived a man in Ur of the Chaldeans, who began to follow an invisible, hitherto unknown God at a mature age. Unlike the surrounding cults, he followed him on a completely personal basis, and his life was dramatically transformed by what he experienced.

"Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph." (Ex 1.8)

It would be nice to finish the reflection on Josef's story with a happy ending. A person without understanding of God´s will see the Bible as a bundle of legends, to which, of course, happy endings of all kind belong. Stories from the Bible then appear (and sell) like infantile messages with a sweet endings. But the truth is different.

It is unlikely that the new pharaoh did not know of Joseph's existence. At least decades passed since his death (for Israelis, Joseph's death marks a four-hundred-year period of slavery), but the trace Joseph left in Egypt was indelible, and his incredible story must have been told among the people for a long time — simply because they were aware of whom they owed for the preservation of their life.

It is more probable then, that the memory of him quickly lost its luster, because Joseph never completely fitted in among Egyptians. He didn't suit, he was different: a different culture, different customs, a different religion. In the same way, God's people can be successful in their job, exceptional in some field, but they are easily forgotten, others are given priority. Because they are different, "they are not of this world." Although Joseph was Pharaoh's right-hand man, the Egyptians were still happy to set aside special territory for his family - because they despised them. It is certain that thanks to his career, Josef aroused jealousy of many and also had enemies at court. They "didn't know" about him simply because they didn't want to remind him. From the past, people remember the chapters that suit them and push the others to oblivion.

It could be sad, but there is a happy ending to it: the fact that it developed like this was not a mistake. It was a preparation for the release of the whole nation from Egypt.

However, in order to understand such a happy ending, one must be able to see things from the other side.

"Then Joseph took an oath from the children of Israel, saying: God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from here.” (Gen 50,25)

Joseph's last recorded words in the Scripture concern his remains. Such thinking is almost out of the sphere of interest for the citizens of the developed world today, but what happened to them after death was very important for the people of antiquity  - they believed that human life has an overlap beyond the temporality of matter.

Joseph got ahead in Egypt, he achieved a high position, wealth, but he associated it only with his temporary fate. He lived in Egypt, but did not want to rest there. He saw his permanent place in the promised land. It is strange to realize that after he had left it at the age of 17, he lived outside till the end of his life when he was 110. He may have visited it a few times in the meantime, but his heart, his home, was there forever. He understood why his fathers valued it as an inheritance from God, but it is clear that Joseph did not act only in blind obedience. He accepted the land into his heart, it was permanently inscribed there.

Life takes us to different places - locally or figuratively. However, we need to know where we are really at home. Sure, we can live or just survive almost anywhere, but to rest we can only where our hearts dwell. Well, St. Augustine already knew about it:

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”