“The God of my days, companion in my adventures”

I just came upon Pope Francis’ address from this past Wednesday, and found it quite moving.

In this address, he reflects on the call of Abraham:

Abraham is thus the man of the Word. When God speaks, man becomes the receptor of that Word and his life the place in which it seeks to become flesh. This is a great novelty in man’s religious journey: the life of a believer begins to be understood as a vocation, thus as a calling, as the place where a promise is fulfilled; and he moves in the world not so much under the weight of an enigma, but with the power of that promise, which one day will be fulfilled. And Abraham believed God’s promise. He believed and he set out without knowing where he was going — thus says the Letter to the Hebrews (cf. 11:8). But he had trust.

In reading the Book of Genesis, we discover that Abraham experienced prayer in constant faithfulness to that Word, which periodically appeared along his path. In short, we could say that in Abraham’s life faith becomes history. Faith becomes history. Indeed Abraham, with his life, with his example teaches us this path, this path in which faith becomes history. God is no longer seen only in cosmic phenomena, as a distant God, who can instill fear. The God of Abraham becomes “my God”, the God of my personal history, who guides my steps, who does not abandon me; the God of my days, companion in my adventures; the God Providence. I ask myself and I ask you: do we have this experience with God? “My God”, the God who accompanies me, the God of my personal history, the God who guides my steps, who does not abandon me, the God of my days? Do we have this experience? Let us think about this a bit.

How beautiful that, called by God, we move in the world “with the power of that promise.” The great task is to become at first “the receptor of that word” so that, by our lives, we might incarnate its meaning and mission. To become receptive is hard. But we become receptive, Pope Francis explains, through becoming familiar with God up to arguing – “Let us not be afraid to argue with God!”

“O Lord God, what will you give me” (Gen. 15:2), “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” (Gen. 15:8), “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? (Gen. 17:17), etc.,etc.