Lech lecha

The glare. It came at you, white and fierce, defying you to take one more step into the sun. Yet there was something benevolent about it, something beckoning, a guide toward the promised land.

Abram squinted. He was never one for bright lights. They reminded him too much of Ur. It was, he recalled, a world in flames. The furnaces built for the Great Tower were discovered to have many uses; soon Ur was full of them, brick-making kilns and sacrificial altars and stakes at which heretics were burnt. The Tower's site grew dotted with the light of a thousand fires, crackling sparks and muffled screams, black smoke, burnt flesh.

Abram hated it. Every morning, as his brothers would leave to go to work on the Tower, Abram would go the other way. "Hebrew", his brothers would taunt him, "Other-sider".

Outside the city, in the cool of a cavern, Abram would think about Him, and was comforted. He, the source of all that was good, all that was righteous and just. There was no place for Him in this wicked world, Abram knew, yet he still believed in Him. The thought of His being gave him peace.