Relying on God is what gets many through hard times

Tammy McKeighan/Spiritual Spinach

I love to hear Cherrie Beam Clarke tell stories.

As a storyteller with the Nebraska Humanities Council, she creates a character named Mariah Monahan who tells listeners what life was like for early settlers.

Cherrie’s descriptions are so vivid that I can almost see the 12-foot-high flames of a prairie fire.

Or swarms of grasshoppers eating garments right off a clothesline.

Or a family trying to cross a river in a covered wagon loaded with children.

Tears come to my eyes when I think of the sacrifices that early pioneers made to settle this land we now call Nebraska. They left friends and family and everything they knew behind to try to make a better life for themselves.

They also remind me of a man named Abraham from the Bible. Centuries before settlers ever loaded wagons and headed west across the vast plains of the United States, God told a man named Abram (later renamed Abraham) to leave his country, his people and his father’s household and “go to the land I show you.”

Why would God do that?

In Genesis chapter 12, we learn that God promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation. Those descendants would later be called Israelites and eventually Jews -- God’s chosen people and the ones from whom Jesus would come.

But before any of that could happen, Abraham had to set out for new territory.

You almost wonder why Abraham couldn’t build a great nation in his own hometown. But in her wonderful workbook/DVD study called “The Patriarchs,” Christian author Beth Moore explains.

Abraham, she said, lived in the city of Ur in Mesopotamia in the Middle East. The people there, including Abraham’s own father, worshipped many gods.

One of those gods was Nanna, the moon god and the city patron. And to earn his favor, “worshippers served him with endless offerings, sacrifices and demeaning rituals,” Moore writes.

Doesn’t sound like much fun.

But Abraham didn’t seem to follow the crowd.

“Bits of Hebrew tradition teach that Abram refused to participate in his family’s religious practices, implying that God called him because he was set apart from the others from the start,” Moore writes.

I’d like to think that Abraham really was different and that God saw something in this man that he could mold and use and direct. First, however, God needed to get him away from some bad, old influences. So with scant instructions, God told Abraham to head out to a new land.

And Abraham did.

He packed up his wife and belongings -- and at age 75 -- became what we might call a Middle Eastern pioneer.

It couldn’t have been easy -- leaving everything behind. Not knowing where he was going. Just trusting God who told him to go.

However God also gave Abraham a wonderful promise. In Genesis 15:1 we read where God said: “Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.”

Whenever I read this verse, I take it personally. I believe God is telling me not to be afraid -- no matter what circumstances I face -- because he is my shield and my very great reward. And I have found that to be true after a long day at work or when facing what could be a tense situation with someone or when I’m just tired.

He is the God who brings me hope and joy.

I imagine God did the same for Abraham and for many of our early Nebraska pioneers.

You know, I’ve always heard that pioneers were self-sufficient. But I think to survive and thrive pioneers probably had to be more God-dependent than self-reliant.

What else could they do when grasshoppers ate their crops down to nothing or when a prairie fire threatened their home or as they sat by the bed of a very sick child in a blizzard? What could they do as they sat in a covered wagon and saw a tornado headed their way? How many settlers prayed, clung to their faith and trusted in God to get them through life’s difficult circumstances?

When I think of all the conveniences I have today -- a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, a hospital only blocks away and a microwave oven for my food -- I’m so grateful for settlers who were willing to go to a land they did not know.

And as I read through the Bible, I’m thankful for a man named Abraham who followed God’s call, paved the way for a nation and became the ancestor of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Tammy McKeighan is news editor of the Fremont Tribune. She can be reached at (402) 721-5000, Ext. 1433 or via e-mail at tammy.mckeighan@lee.net.