The Place of Mercy

When Abram pressed on past the plan of God, he found himself in a passel of trouble.  With a famine in the land to which God had brought him, Abram decided he should move on to the other side of the fence to a land called Egypt.  "Now there was a famine in the land.  So Abram went down to Egypt."  (Genesis 12:10)  As it usually does, one wrong led to another wrong and the second in some ways was worse than the first.  Out of fear for his own life, he told his wife, Sarai, to say she was not his wife, but his sister.  And in such a manner she was taken into Pharoah's house.  And her husband slept safely in his own tent!  

It is always best to stay inside the plan of God.  When Adam was caught with the forbidden fruit, he took another step away from God's plan by trying to shift the blame for his actions to another.  David's desire for Bathsheba finally took him to the place of killing her husband.  Holding prejudice in their hearts made James and John ready to call down fire upon a village of Samaritans. Whenever we venture outside of the plan of God, we venture into a land where the very plan of God for us is put at risk.  

Fortunately for Abram and each one of us, there is a greater desire for mercy than judgment in the heart of God.  As we continue reading the story of Abram, we come to those Words which speak of God's mercy, "He (Abram) journeyed...to the place where his tent had been at the beginning...to the place where he had made an altar at the first and there Abram called on the name of the Lord."  (Genesis 13:3-4)   When Abram chose a way other than the way of the Lord, he was by the mercy of God led back to the place of beginning, the place of faith, the place of living once again inside the plan of God.  May the journey take each of us to such a place.