One of the odd things about living in the Antipodes is that the Christmas/New Year holidays coincides with the summer school break and academic year break. My first tutorials are in February: it is this time of year that New Zealand shuts down and everyone goes and finds a beach and some surf. And, about ten days into the break, I realize that I truly need it. However, today’s text is not about that, but instead about new starts, doors opening.

Now, I know many who say that we should be stepping out in faith: I am not sure if that is always the case. For some are called, true, to move to other places and do great things for God. To leave their land. For the rest of us, our job is to remain salt and light, in a time which is neither. And we do this poorly.

Now the LORD said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”So Abram went, as the LORD had told him, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his wife, and Lot his brother’s son, and all their possessions that they had gathered, and the people that they had acquired in Haran, and they set out to go to the land of Canaan. When they came to the land of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem, to the oak of Moreh. At that time the Canaanites were in the land. Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built there an altar to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

(Genesis 12:1-7 ESV)

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God. By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Therefore from one man, and him as good as dead, were born descendants as many as the stars of heaven and as many as the innumerable grains of sand by the seashore.

(Hebrews 11:8-12 ESV)

A slight deviation onto the election of Israel. God is not man, that he changes his mind, nor the son of man, that he needs to repent. The promises made to Abram are still valid to the people of Israel: salvation could come through keeping the law, but one man alone could do that, and he made the new covenant. If you are not under the new covenant of christ, you are under the old covenant, of Abram, Isaac and Moses.

And only a fool would offend those whose descendants have the promise that they can bless and curse nations and peoples. In this, the liberal poison that has rotted the PCUSA is showing its fruit.

The Presbyterian Church USA, the flagship church of America’s fading Protestant mainline, voted to boycott the state of Israel earlier this year, and nearly voted to prohibit the use of the word “Israel” in its prayers. The new Marcionism of the mainline churches justifies its aid and comfort to Israel’s enemies by rejecting a link between the living Jewish people and the God of Abraham. By contrast, both Pope John Paul II of blessed memory and Benedict XVI emphasized that God’s covenant with the Jewish people never was revoked.

That is also the firmly-stated view of the German Evangelical Church, the main body of German Protestantism, and it was front-page news in Die Welt, one of the country’s quality dailies, this morning. Its new chairman, Heinrich Bedford-Strohm, told the newspaper,

“We speak today of the continuing Election of Israel. The new covenant for which Jesus Christ stands does not in fact replace God’s old covenant with the people of Israel. On the contrary, Jesus Christ brings the so-called heathen into the covenant. For us Christians he is the person in whom we experience God. But that in no way diminishes God’s covenant with Israel.”

Dr. Bedford-Strohm emphasized that his church had moved beyond Luther, the founder of German Protestantism, because Luther’s Jew-hatred could not be dismissed as a “minor error.” He puts the American Protestant mainline to shame. There is Jew-hatred in Germany, to be sure, mainly among Muslim immigrants….

Nonetheless, there is still a mood of repentance that must be acknowledged–in contrast to the smug, narcissistic progressivism of the Presbyterian Church USA, for example. I’m no Christian, and I don’t love my enemies, but I respect the grandchildren of my enemies who strive to come to grips with the past.

Well, yes. Smug, narcissistic progressivism poisons, and it will not allow one to listen and act in faith. Being aware of your own sin, your own broken state, allows you to listen, and in faith obey. For without faith nothing we can do.

Coming back to the text. Abram was given a mission. It was to live in a new country, as a stranger, and not settle: not be citified. He was not to give his loyalty to any city-state or nation-state. And by faith he beleived that he would have a son to inherit (rather than Eliezer of Damascus (Gen 15:1). He was not to follow in the practices of the inhabitants of Canaan.

For most of us, our mission is obvious. It is raising our families, doing our job, obeying the lawful orders we have. If you are a mother of two or three young children you need not seek another duty: you have a full-time job already. If you are a student, that is your mission and that is your mission-field.

We look to the spectacular and think we need to do great things. This is an error. We need to consider that even in an adventure, it is the mundane that preoccupies us. If you are climbing a hill you better not look at the summit but where your hands and feet are, lest you fall off. And you better be obsessive about cooking and camp hygiene.

We are promised sufficient strength for the tasks we have to do. And in our strength, we are not going to succeed.

Dwelling in God’s presence all the time is the only way through that that I’ve found, He’s strong enough to center me. I am NOT strong enough in myself, all I do is wash up endlessly on the rocks of pleasing one person or another. Painful. Pointless. Unpleasant.

Weirdly, after the initial fear-storm, centering on God is better, and I seem to be more of a joy to others. Which is important to me, and always will be.

Now, I have a very long task list for next year. So long that the first thing I need to do when I get back is write them all down in the front of the 2015 daybook and then strike them off as I go: a task I dislike as much as budgeting and paying the bills. But the people in my life are more important than the schedule, and God is more important than both.