Some disappointments are harder to understand than others.
We prayed about the decision. We tried to do the right thing. We sought wise counsel. We stepped forward believing we were headed in the right direction.
And then everything went wrong.
Those moments raise a harder question: What happens to faith when we thought faith was what brought us here?
Abraham confronts that question almost immediately after G-d calls him.
“Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house, to the land that I will show you” (Genesis 12:1).
Abraham isn’t even told where he is going. He must leave home before he can see the destination.
Then G-d promises: “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you” (Genesis 12:2).
Abraham obeys.
He leaves everything familiar and travels to the land G-d has chosen for him. He builds an altar and calls upon the name of G-d.
And then comes a verse that should stop us:
“There was a famine in the land” (Genesis 12:10).
A famine?
G-d told Abraham to go. Abraham went.
G-d promised blessing. Abraham trusted Him.
And the place to which G-d led him could no longer feed him.
We might expect Abraham’s obedience to be followed by confirmation that he had made the right choice. Instead, the Torah gives us almost the opposite.
It reveals something important about faith.
We often say “I trust G-d” when what we really mean is, “I trust G-d to make this work.”
The distinction is difficult to notice when life unfolds as we hoped. The job comes through. The treatment succeeds. The relationship heals.
But what happens when it doesn’t?
There is a difference between trusting G-d and trusting a particular outcome from G-d.
Abraham is promised blessing, but he is not given a schedule or an explanation of how that blessing will unfold. He knows the promise. He does not know the path.
Neither do we.
That doesn’t mean every disappointment conceals some wonderful outcome we will eventually understand. Some prayers are answered differently than we desperately hoped. Some losses remain losses. Faith does not require us to call pain pleasant or pretend that questions have answers when they do not.
It asks something harder.
Can I continue my relationship with G-d when I cannot reconcile what I believed with what I am experiencing?
Abraham’s journey begins with the words “to the land that I will show you.” G-d does not show Abraham the destination and then ask him to walk.
Abraham must walk in order to be shown.
That pattern continues after he arrives. He still cannot see how famine fits with blessing. The road makes sense only in fragments.
Ours does too.
We want faith to provide certainty. But Abraham’s story suggests something deeper. Faith is not certainty about what G-d will do next. It is a relationship strong enough to continue when we don’t know.
Sometimes we receive the answer we prayed for, and gratitude comes easily. Sometimes the landscape before us looks nothing like the promise we thought we understood.
Abraham teaches us not to confuse the landscape with the destination.
G-d’s first words to him were not, “Understand.”
They were, “Go.”
And sometimes faith begins with taking the next step before we can see where the road leads.
I wish you a good week and Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yonatan Hambourger
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