Genesis 12:2

And you shall be a blessing

We see Abraham as a traveler to the promised land. Abraham just did not leave the place where he met with God. Instead he built an altar to glorify the Lord. This is the place where God made the unconditional promise that He would give Abraham’s descendants the land that God owned. Now walking to the next verse in Genesis 12 vs 8, the Bible declares: And he moved from there to the mountain east of Bethel, and he pitched his tent with Bethel on the west and Ai on the east; there he built an altar to the Lord and called on the name of the Lord.

Throughout the scriptures’, saints have called on the name of the Lord. Paul goes on to say that whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved in Romans 10 vs 13. What does it mean to call on the name of the Lord? It means to pray to the Lord, it means to cry out to the Lord. Here we see that Abraham walked to a higher ground and pitched his tent with Bethel on the west. Bethel means house of God. Ai means ruins. So Abraham pitched his tent between the house of God and the ruins. Many a times we are neither in the house of God nor in the ruins, but we carefully play a balancing act between the good and the bad. Many people say that they are good because they don’t drink or smoke or do other things that are forbidden by family traditions but at the same time they don’t spend time in meditating the Word of God or in prayer. So spiritually they become weak and get absorbed into worldly things. Weakness and fear sets in their lives. In the case of Abraham, he built an altar to the Lord and called on His name.

This is the second altar that Abraham built calling on the name of the Lord. It’s called the altar of prayer. This is such a great example of how we live today. When we are in a similar situation, intentionally we have to call on the name of Lord. We have to pray and explain our spiritual condition to the Lord of mercy. Calling on the name of the Lord means spiritually examining our lifestyle whether we are pleasing the Living God or pleasing ourselves. May the name of our Lord Jesus Christ be glorified for now and forevermore! Amen.

Maranatha!