John Goldingay’s translation of the First Testament renders Genesis 12:1 as (emphasis mine):
Now the Lord said to Abram, “Get yourself from your country… to the country that I shall enable you to see.”
Abram doesn’t know what he’s looking for when he sets out, but God will enable him to see it as he journeys.
It’s the same with us: when God calls us, we never know the end from the beginning. We don’t see the destination before we set out on the path. It’s not like punching in coordinates in a GPS system. We discern as we go, and we learn to discern as we go. We are steadily enabled to see the country as we begin the journey toward it.
There is something transformative about the journey itself that doesn’t happen ahead of time, that cannot happen ahead of time, because it’s only in beginning the journey that we begin to learn to see the country we’re headed toward.
