Blessing on the Move: The Outpouring of God's Blessing through the Migrant Abraham

In this article, I explore the relationship between the mission of God and Abraham's life as a foreign migrant. In the narrative of Genesis, Abraham enters as a nomadic foreigner called by God as a representative of the nations for the nations. The biblical text is remarkably silent on Abraham's prior history listing no personal achievements, no remarkable character traits, and no religious background. Yet it is through this unknown migrant that God chose to proclaim his greatest blessing declaring that, "in [Abraham] all the nations of the earth will be blessed" (Gen 12: 3). The missiological exploration of the person of Abraham usually ends with this divine proclamation, however this is simply the beginning of the outworking of God's missional promise during Abraham's lifetime. It is in analyzing Abraham's cross-cultural encounters as a migrant that the full importance of the fulfillment of Genesis 12: 3 emerges in addition to God's strategic implementation of mission from the periphery.