Abraham Leaves Home
His name was still Abram back then, before God gave him a new one to go with a whole new story. One ordinary day, the Lord spoke to him, and what He said was not small: "Go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you."
Go where, exactly? Abram did not know. God did not say, not yet. He simply asked Abram to leave everything familiar, and then, right after that enormous ask, He gave Abram promises to carry instead.
Listen to what God promised him. "I will make of you a great nation," God said. He would bless Abram and make his name great, and then came something surprising: "You will be a blessing." Not just someone who receives one. Someone who becomes one.
God even spoke about how other people would treat Abram, and what would come of it either way. Then came a promise almost too big to hold: "In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." All of them. Every family, everywhere.
That is a great deal to carry away from one conversation: a command, and a mountain of promises. What would Abram do with all of it?
He went. Genesis says it as simply as that: "Abram went, as the Lord had told him." Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran, not a boy setting off on an adventure, but a man leaving behind a whole life already lived.
He still did not know where the road ended. He went anyway.
Abram did not travel alone. He took Sarai his wife and his nephew Lot, and all the possessions and people that had become part of their household in Haran, everyone and everything moving at once.
And they set out for the land of Canaan. Genesis tells it so plainly you could almost miss how big it was: they came to the land of Canaan.
Go back to God's first words to Abram: "Go ... to the land that I will show you." Now notice what Genesis says only a little further on: "Abram went, as the Lord had told him."
If you were the one hearing those words, go, but I will not tell you where, how do you think you would feel? Would you pack right away, or would you want to ask a few questions first?
Close your eyes for a second and imagine standing where Abram stood, with a whole unknown road ahead of you. What is the first thing you would want to know?
Abram kept going, all the way to a place called Shechem, near the oak of Moreh, where the Canaanites were living at that time.
And there, in a land that was not his yet, among people he did not know, the Lord appeared to him and said: "To your offspring I will give this land."
The land Abram had just walked into became part of an even bigger promise. God was not only talking about Abram anymore. He was talking about everyone who would come after him.
Abram built an altar right there, because the Lord had appeared to him. It was his way of saying: I want to remember this.
Then he moved on toward the hill country east of Bethel, and pitched his tent between Bethel to the west and Ai to the east.
There he built another altar and called on the name of the Lord, twice now, stopping to mark the place where God had met him.
Abram did not stay there either. Genesis says he kept going, journeying on toward the Negev.
Think about that: the story that began with just "Go ... to the land that I will show you" has now brought Abram all the way into Canaan.
But this is only the beginning of Abraham's much bigger story. There will be more journeys ahead, more promises, more surprises still to come.
For this Devotion, we will stop here, right in the middle of the road, the way Abram's own story kept unfolding one step at a time.
Think back over the order of everything that happened: God spoke, gave Abram a command, and handed him promises.
Abram went. He reached Canaan, and there God appeared to him again with another promise. Abram built altars and called on the name of the Lord, not once, but again and again.
Which part of that would you want to ask about most? Something about God's promise? Something you would want to ask Abram himself?
You do not have to know the answer right now. Wondering about it is enough.
How to Talk About This Story With Your Child
Abraham's story often gets told this way: "He was scared, but he trusted God anyway." It is a tidy line, but Genesis 12 never actually says Abram was afraid. It does not call him fearless either.
What the passage gives us is something plainer, and honestly sturdier: God told Abram to go. And Abram went, just as the Lord had told him.
For a child, that difference is worth keeping. We do not need to hand them an invented emotion to make this story land. The going itself is the remarkable part.
Children will sometimes ask: "Why didn't God just tell Abram where he was going?"
Genesis does not answer that one. It only says "to the land that I will show you." That is genuinely all we are given.
It is tempting to fill that gap with our own explanation, but it is better to say it plainly: "The Bible doesn't tell us why God said it that way."
Then look together at what the passage does tell you: God spoke, God promised, Abram went, and eventually he arrived in Canaan. That is plenty to talk about.
There is a part of this story that is easy to lose if you focus only on the mystery of the destination.
God's promises are the real center of the passage: a great nation, a blessing, a great name, becoming a blessing to others, and every family on earth being blessed through him.
Later, God adds even more: the land itself, and Abram's future offspring.
Your child does not need the full picture of where all that leads later in Scripture. For now, it is enough to notice: God's call to Abram never came alone. It came bundled with promises.
Pray Together
You do not have to use these exact words. You can talk to God together in your own words. Or you can pray:
God, thank You for Abram's story. Thank You for the promises You gave him. Help us listen closely to what the Bible actually says. Help us trust You even when we do not know what is next. And help us bring our questions to You honestly. Amen.
God asked Abram to go somewhere he could not yet see, and gave him promises he could not yet picture coming true.
And Abram went, with Sarai, with Lot, with everything they owned, all the way into the land of Canaan.
There God met him again, promised the land to his children after him, and Abram built an altar to remember it.
He built another altar further on, and called on the name of the Lord, and then kept walking. This was only the first stretch of the road. Abraham's story keeps going, and so, in its own way, does yours.
Continue your family Bible time with more free stories and activities from Little Faith Hands.