There is a quiet, almost unsettling abruptness to the way God moves people. But if we look closer at the stories, we find that the human side of the journey is often much more familiar, messy, and hesitant than we remember.
In yesterday’s lectionary readings, we find ourselves standing at two separate crossroads separated by thousands of years, yet the air in both places feels exactly the same. It is the heavy, breathless air of a threshold.
In Genesis 12, Abram is seventy-five years old. The text tells us with beautiful simplicity: So Abram went.
But the reality behind those three words is a long, human story of delay. The journey to Canaan didn’t actually start in Genesis 12; it began years earlier with Abram’s father, Terah. They had set out together from Ur, but when they reached a place called Haran, they stopped. They unpacked. They built a life. Abram stayed in that halfway point for years, accumulating wealth and watching the clock tick by.
The ugly truth is, we as humans easily get settled into places not meant for us to stay.
Haran was comfortable. It was safe. It was easier to linger in the in-between than to face the raw unknown of the open road. “So Abram went” wasn’t a sudden, flawless impulse of instant faith; it was the restarting of a stalled engine. It was the moment Abram chose to leave the comfort of a long delay and finally finish the journey he was called to.
Fast forward centuries later to a dusty, sun-baked street in Capernaum. Matthew is sitting in his tax collector’s booth. In the ancient world, that booth was the ultimate place to settle. It represented financial security at the cost of community, respect, and identity. Matthew had built a wall of coins around himself and settled into a life defined by labels.
Jesus walks by, looks into that booth—looks past the ledger and the heavy compromises Matthew lived by—and says two words: “Follow me.”
And Matthew, like Abram breaking free from the gravity of Haran, simply gets up, leaves the booth behind, and walks.
If you look closely at these texts, the common thread is about the sheer authority of the One who calls, and the courage it takes for us to drop our anchors.
But in the spiritual geometry of a calling, dropping your anchor means letting go of the things we have used to anchor ourselves to the wrong places. It is the courage to detach from a temporary comfort zone so that we can be moved by something greater. If we look closely at how authority and anchor-dropping play out in these two specific texts, the connection becomes incredibly clear:
1. The Sheer Authority of the One Who Calls
In both stories, the command to move does not come with a detailed explanation, a structural blueprint, or a business plan. The Voice doesn’t negotiate. Abram is given a command: “Go.” There is no room for debate, just an immediate shift in cosmic authority from Abram’s current reality to God’s vision. Matthew is given two words: “Follow me.” Jesus doesn’t offer him a salary match or a guarantee of safety.
This is “sheer authority” because the Voice itself is the validation. It carries an inherent weight that makes the current reality—the wealth of Haran or the Roman coins in the booth—instantly feel small, secondary, and temporary. The One who calls has the ultimate right to redefine where we belong.
2. The Courage to Drop Our Anchors
An anchor is anything we cling to for stability, identity, or security. The problem is that we often drop our anchors in places where we were only meant to be passing through.
Abram’s anchor was the safety of the familiar estate in Haran; Matthew’s anchor was the financial security of the Roman franchise. Both men had to let go of a self-made bedrock to find a truer one.
To drop anchor in Christ is to trust that the only ground worth holding onto is the One who called us out into the deep in the first place.
Romans 4 reminds us that Abraham’s faith was credited to him because he believed in a God who “gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not.”
Sometimes, the most faithful thing we can do is audit our surroundings. We have to look at the “Haran” or the “tax booth” in our own lives—those familiar, comfortable spaces where we have settled for less than what God has for us—and find the courage to start moving again. You don’t need the whole map to take the first step. You just need to trust the Voice that tells you it’s time to go.
So, what are you waiting for?
⚓ From the Pew: Yesterday’s Readings
• First Reading: Genesis 12:1–9
• The Psalm: Psalm 33:1–12
• Second Reading: Romans 4:13–25
• The Gospel: Matthew 9:9–13, 18–26
All readings quoted from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) translation.
The Anchor Point 
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