God is the Way.
Follow the Spirit through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures. – W.H. Auden “For the Time Being”

God speaks to Abram, but very little has been said about him; he has spoken no words and has barely acted. By calling him, God brings Abram into the new day provided by promise. The divine word of command and promise newly constitutes Abram (though, as we have seen, not a creatio ex nihilo). God’s new commitment to the relationship with Abram that promising entails makes for a new identity for the one who now responds in trust and obedience. Abram now takes into his life the character of the promises made; he is now one whose future looks like this. The future is not yet, but because God has been faithful to earlier promises, Abram’s very being takes on the character of that future, though not apart from his own faithful response to the word of God, which created his faith in the first place. More generally, the promise stands at the beginning of Israel’s ancestral story. We may understand not only the stories that follow, but also the entire history of Israel, as constituted and shaped by God’s promises.

Even more, promise as promise serves as a key here. What counts about God’s promises finally is their continuing status as promise, which can then be appropriated by the community of faith in later generations as still applicable to them and their future (see Overview).

4. Abram’s trust in the promise and his move from Haran to Canaan will certainly mean a new level of meaning and life for him. But the God who commands and promises will also change forever as well. Having made promises, and being faithful to those promises, means that God is now committed to a future with the one who has faithfully responded. The text describes not only human faithfulness, but also divine faithfulness to promises made to a specific family. God will never be the same again. By his word, God has created a new family, indeed a new world for both Abraham and God, which gives to each a revised job description, though the goal of a reclaimed creation remains the same.

5. This text has many children in both the OT and the NT. It works itself out in the kingship of David and the associated promises (2 Sam 7:9; Pss 47:9; 72:17). The prophets address the theme of blessing on the nations (see Isa 19:24-25; Jer 4:2), which in turn arises in the NT and grounds the inclusion of Gentiles in the community of faith (see Acts 3:25; Gal 3:8).

On another point, Heb 11:8-16 celebrates Abraham and Sarah’s journey of faith, but also recognizes its unfinished character. Their pilgrimage becomes one of faith and hope in the promises, but they do not live to see their fulfillment (a theme also present in Acts 7:2-5). As such, the pilgrimage of Abram and Sarai becomes a metaphor for the Christian life, a journey that reaches out toward a promised future, but comes up short of final fulfillment within one’s own lifetime. Not that there are no signs of that future along the way; indeed, God provides blessings for the journey in an amazing range of sizes and colors. But persons of faith will realize that hope never becomes obsolete, for “here we have no lasting city” (Heb 13:14); the “better country” (Heb 11:16) will remain stretched out before us until our dying day.