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.