February 8

Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house. — Gen 12:1

Abraham ... was gathered to his people. — Gen 25:8

After all communion we dwell as upon islands, dotted over a great archipelago, each upon his little rock with the sea dashing between us; but the time comes when, if our hearts are set upon that great Lord whose presence makes us one, there shall be no more sea and all the isolated rocks shall be parts of a great continent … If we cultivate that sense of detachment from the present and of having our true affinities in the unseen, if we dwell here as strangers because our citizenship is in heaven, then death will not drag us away from our associates nor hunt us into a lonely land, but will bring us where closer bonds shall knit the “sweet societies” together, and the sheep shall couch close by one another because all gathered round the one Shepherd. Then many a tie shall be re–woven, and the solitary wanderer meet again the dear ones whom he had “loved long since and lost awhile.” — Alex. McLaren.