Moving - Genesis 12:1-7; Abraham 2:1-8

I’m not exactly sure how long this famine lasts for, but it seems to be ongoing long enough that Abraham and his whole entourage move around quite a bit. I can’t quite keep track of where he starts and all of his travels but first I think it’s important to get some genealogy stuff out of the way first. Noah’s son Shem had seven generations of children until he got to Terah. Terah had at least three children, Abraham, Nahor, and Haran. Haran had at least 4 children, Milcah (female), Lot (male), Iscah (not sure), and Sarai (female). Haran died in the famine, leaving his four children. Haran’s brother Nahor marries Milcah, Haran’s daughter and Nahor’s niece, and Abraham marries Sarah, Haran’s other daughter and Abraham’s niece. Different times and all that I guess, I just feel sorry for those girls because I’m sure they had absolutely no say in who they ended up marrying. Maybe the family thought that the girls would be treated better by staying in the family, and maybe that’s true, who knows. God comes to Abraham in a vision and tells him to leave the land he lives in now and leave his father’s house and go “unto a land that I will show thee.” So Abraham leaves “the land of Ur,” and goes to the land of Canaan and the IM points out that this is a different Canaan than where the Canaanites live who are in a different part of the scriptures, but it’s too much for me to keep up with so I’m just going to leave it at that. Abraham takes his wife Sarah, his nephew Lot and his wife, and interestingly enough, Abraham’s father Terah followed him even though God said to get away from his father’s house and he tried to kill him previously. With almost the whole family going with him, Abraham ends up in a “land which we denominated Haran,” presumably after his dead brother. The “famine abated,” and the land of Haran had “many flocks,” which indicates to me that Abraham and his family were blessed by God for being obedient, and remember that Terah had repented in Ur during the famine. But even with all those blessings, Terah “turned again unto his idolatry, therefore he continued in Haran.” It’s just another example of the ways in which people are compelled to repent through suffering, then turn again to wickedness once things start going well. Maybe I should be more grateful for my trials and hope it keeps me close to God. It’s not clear to me why exactly Abraham and Lord “prayed unto the Lord,” but the Lord appeared to Abraham and commanded him to take Lot and leave Haran to become “a minister to bear my name in a strange land which I will give unto thy seed after thee for an everlasting possession, when they hearken to my voice.” Another example of blessing promised conditioned on obedience, like the Nephites and Lamanites who were promised to prosper in the land as long as they obeyed the commandments. All this might have been a little overwhelming for Abraham, I know that it would be for me, maybe he felt a little bit inadequate and wondered how he was going to “minister to bear my name in a strange land,” that certainly would have been my first thought. But God reminds Abraham that He is the God of the universe and the sea and wind and fire and mountains “obeys my voice.”