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.