Heidi, a friend of mine from Germany, once told me that “Texas is to America what Bavaria is to Germany.” In what way?” I asked. “Texas is like a whole different country inside the united States,” she answered. Heidi had probably seen more of the U.S. Than I had, as her husband was on an assignment in his job that would end in a year., and they were traveling the country in all his spare time. “Is Texas really so very different?” I asked. “Oh!, yes.” she replied. I didn’t get much more from her than that.

I myself was an import from New York State, and so her remark surprised me. When I had arrived in Texas from Central New York, the most notable difference I found, was the warm hospitality in neighbors and acquaintances. People seemed eager to share their homes and iced tea with me, and I was impressed. Maybe Texas really was a “land within a land.”

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people, and your father’s household, to the land I will show you. . . So Abram went, as the Lord had told him. (Genesis 12:1&4) Into the land of Canaan God led Abraham and Lot. This was God’s destination for Abraham, and it was there that God gave Abraham the promise of a son, and unending heritage of descendants, and a land.

Abraham’s descendants became a slave nation in Egypt until they returned hundreds of years later to the land promised to Abraham, the land that became the land of Israel, named for one of Abraham’s grandsons, Jacob (Israel) When Jacob dreamed of the angels ascending and descending on a ladder to Heaven, he knew that the dream was a glimpse of the land within the land that was filled with the Spirit of his grandfather’s God. The land within the land of Jacob’s grandfather’s heritage is the spiritual land of uncompromising relationship that Abraham proved to have, Jacob acquired, and eventually the whole liberated nation of Israel, after a forty years’ walk, entered into.

The land within the land is the place where our devotion lives, where connection is made with our God, and promises made and promises kept. Jacob’s older brother Esau could see only his material inheritance; Jacob risked everything to acquire the inheritance of his father and grandfather, the land within the land.

Love in Him,

Prue