Most people will ask me, “ah…who is Terah?” Actually, as you will see, that is part of the point. Most people have no idea who Terah is. The reason for this is both sad, and sobering. You see, Terah was Abram’s father, and, as we shall discover, he was a man who missed his destiny.

I remember being told that Abraham left the place called “Ur”, halfway between present day Baghdad and the Persian Gulf, in Southern Iraq. I heard that his ancestors were idol worshipers, and that God had spoken to him to leave Ur and travel to the land which we now know as Israel. I also remember studying that the distance he covered was some 1,500 miles (2400 km), a huge distance to cover on foot with all of one’s earthly possessions!

While all of this is true, there is a part of this picture that is missing. It all comes into focus when we read Gen 11:31:

“And Terah took his son Abram and his grandson Lot, the son of Haran, and his daughter-in-law Sarai…and they went out with them from Ur of the Chaldeans to go to the land of Canaan.”

Aha! So, it wasn’t Abram who was the first one called to go from Ur to Canaan; it was Terah. Terah had been commissioned to go. He had been given the opportunity to be the heir to the promise, to be a father of nations. But he stopped half way, and would not continue. How grievous! Think about it: the whole world would have recognized Terah as the greatest religious figure of ancient times. But instead, very people even know his name.

So what happened to Terah? His son died, that’s what happened. It takes some reading between the lines, but clearly, Terah was not able to move past the death of his youngest son.

In order to grasp this, you have to look back a few verses, starting in Gen 11:26. Here we find that Terah, son of Nahor, had three sons: Abram, Nahor (named after his father), and Haran. Then in verse 28 we see that “Haran died before his father Terah in his native land, in Ur”. So by the time this family (including Haran’s son Lot) hit the road, Haran had already passed away.

So why do I say that Terah would not continue the journey because his son had died? Well, when the whole family left Ur, as was custom in ancient times, they would have brought the bones of his son Haran with them. And when they arrived in Haran, verse 11:31 concludes by saying “they came to Haran and dwelt there.” Beloved, this is more than a coincidence. The town’s original name was NOT Haran. Terah named the place Haran, after his son who had passed away. Whether it was grief, or weariness, or fear, that caused Terah to stay in this place, we don’t know. But we do know by his choice of the name, that it became the spot where he wanted to forever memorialize and immortalize his son. As time passed, when “Terah died in Haran”, his own body was laid to rest NOT in the land of Promise to which he had been called, but in the place where he had stopped and buried his son.

Terah had made a grave mistake. It is a mistake I have seen people make so many times. It is a mistake that any of us can make, and that is why we must diligently lay hold of the reason for which we have been apprehended in Christ Jesus. The “upward call” of God belongs not to those who begin well, but to those who press towards the goal of the prize, and do no allow anything, not even the death of a son, to disrupt or distract from the purpose of God.

“I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me…I press toward to goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.” (Phil 3:12,14)