Patriarch Chapter 1 Part 1

Patriarch is a novel retelling the remarkable story of Abraham. For five years I lived and breathed his journey. Come and walk his road of faith with me.

It’s been fun revisiting Patriarch after a fourteen year break, in order to re-record the new audio version. It’s good to be back. 

For those five years I wrestled with questions like: who initiated the initial journey to Haran- Abram, his father Terah, or maybe both- albeit for very different reasons. I spent months trying to get beneath the skin of the two patriarchs, aided by research into the remarkable city of Ur and the context of the time. Of course, I can’t be at all sure I got the feelings or motivations of either men right, but the more time I spent with them those years ago, the more the Bible and this particular story came alive. And now that I’m back, I know I will go still further on and deeper in. Oh, how I love the Bible for that! I still open it with a sense of awe and wonder, fondly remembering what it has taught me before, and excitedly anticipating what new might be revealed.  

The Bible tells the story of real people living real lives in real places. Dare I say it, essentially, people just like you and me. They wrestled with the same issues albeit contextually and culturally different. So, I’m pretty confident I haven’t transposed and imposed my feelings and thought processes onto them.  

I see an old man, Abram, wrestling with legacy, and an even older one, Terah, wrestling with mortality. Both are unsettled by their quest, no longer able to acquiesce complacently in the superficiality and futility of what their society valued. One looked up, outside of his experience, in the quest of a higher being. The other looked back, to his past, to find the comfort of the familiar. I relate to both, but know only one- the revelation of God Himself, can provide eternal answers. Neither knew God, and my guess is only one found Him. And he was the one to find legacy, meaning and life as a consequence. 2000 years later Jesus was to tell some equally clueless men that God is the God of the living Abraham. This is the story of how Abram found eternal life, and how he paved the way for us to find life in Christ too. And it all began in the dust and dirt of a city called Ur, approximately 4000 years ago. 

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