We call Abraham “father” not because he got God’s attention by living as a saint, but because God made something out of Abraham when he was a nobody.  Romans 4:17 (The Message)

Every once in a while, there will be a picture of a famous celebrity before they became famous. It’s fun to see the “before” and “after” pictures. It’s kind of like looking at our grade school pictures and comparing them to the family Christmas picture that we took for our Christmas cards this year. The “before” pictures have fewer wrinkles on the face, and we may have less hair now. We don’t look quite so bright eyed and excited for the future; but we have a lot of wisdom in our eyes that we didn’t have back then.

Abraham was living with his family back in Ur, working in the family business and just living his life. Suddenly he gets a wild hair to essentially travel from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. I don’t know this, but I have a feeling that there were some discussions between Abraham and God over this change of venue; but the important thing is that Abraham went. He packed up his livestock, his wife, his nephew, and he headed west — in the days before air conditioning and automobiles!

There is a tendency to think we must lead perfect lives before we can be of any use to God. We try to remember our manners and to treat others kindly, hoping that God doesn’t hear the voice in our heads telling us to just put a sock in their mouths and show them the door. We go to the trouble of slowing down when we see a police car just up ahead and we keep a smile plastered on our faces at all times. But God doesn’t need those behaviors to develop somebody to be reckoned with in his world.

There are a host of Bible heroes we can use as models for “Heroes of the Faith” but, if we look at their before and after pictures, they were really much nicer when they were nobodies. After Abraham become a Somebody, his life shifted on him. He tried to pass his wife off as his sister twice in order to save his own skin; but he still went where God told him to go.

After he became a powerful king, David had an affair with another man’s wife and then had the man killed. Solomon had a small problem with the ladies and Moses went around hitting the rocks — real rocks, not ice cubes. Somehow, we seem to be better people when we are Nobodies than when we become Somebodies. People expect Somebodies to be smart and to have all the answers and humans just don’t have that knowledge.

This isn’t to say that God isn’t also the God of the Somebodies, but I have a feeling that he may have had more fun with them before they became famous!

Becky Gillette is a former teacher, newspaper reporter and preacher who seeks to take an original approach to life’s lessons. In creating a personal relationship with God, she is discovering a whole new world of wonder, joy, and learning experiences. She currently lives in her home state of Kansas.