The Settlers

“Terah took Abram his son and Lot the son of Haran, his grandson, and Sarai his daughter-in-law, his son Abram’s wife, and they went forth together from Ur of the Chaldeans to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Haran, they settled there” (Genesis 11:31, ESV).

I don’t know what kind of man Terah was, since very little has been written about him. We do know that Ur of Chaldeans was kind of an up-and-coming place. It was a place where prosperity had just begun to sweep through the land.

Abram was born in this land that was becoming wealthy. It was a land with a great future and great promise that it would have been a good place to live. For some reason, Abram’s father decided he needed to leave. We don’t know if it was because of an ambition to go somewhere new or to build something new.

Genesis says, “Terah took”, and “took” in the Hebrew means “to grasp.” It was kind of a gritting of the teeth and a clenching of the fist and saying, “I will take hold of my future. I will make my future what I want it to be.” There is something very dangerous in that. There was no indication that God had given him a promise about the land of Canaan, but instead he had this self-ambition. The outcome of this grasping kind of lifestyle is always the second word we will see in this passage “they settled there.” For some reason when Terah got to Haran, he just paused…and then he settled.

Have you ever done that? “The journey is too much for me. The pressure, the intensity, always having to try to push this stone up a hill.” Whenever you start something in the flesh, you end up doing what Terah did. He settled. There is no worse way to spend your life than settling for mediocrity. Nothing is further from God’s agenda for your life than for you to start on a journey and all of a sudden give up.

Whenever we start grasping for ourselves, taking for ourselves, trying to become rich, trying to become famous, trying to become successful in our own energy—we will always end up “settling.” Why? Because you’re only halfway to where you set out to go.

“But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Matthew 6:33).