When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am Almighty God; walk before Me and be blameless." (Gen 17,1)

In order to perceive God, one must be ready for it inside. Jesus put it well in the parable of the sower - good seed alone is not enough to produce good fruit. There must also be good soil ready for it. Try to speak to a crowd of people on the street about the beauty of the morning dawn, and your words will be picked up only by those who are attentive to such things or, on the contrary, who have not seen them for a long time and thirst for them. Others will probably be deaf to it.

Abram's heart, therefore, was gradually prepared to hear a word from God and to receive it by faith. In this way he would become a participant in the greatest miracle by which God guides a man through the history of salvation and by which He delivers him, namely, the birth of new life out of death. If life of our age is not to end irrevocably in eternal death, there is no way out of it except through the "valley of the shadow of death" into the heavenly divine life. In other words, it is a matter of death and resurrection. This was Abram's only hope of new life as his body was gradually dying.

After thirteen years, God broke the silence and came to Abram again. Until now, He had never told him so clearly and universally what He was asking of him, as of every man of God: "walk before me always, be blameless!" (Note that we usually say we walk "with" God, not "before" God). So Abram is to be like an open book to God, and he is to be careful of the integrity of his ways. No idol has ever made such demands on its worshipers. It would be an enslaving demand if God were not love, in reality or (beware!) even in Abram's idea of Him. For then it would be a form of internal religious prison.

How precious it is when we know from another Scriptures (what even Abram already increasingly perceived), that God is truly "love." (1 J 4,16).