God Makes a Friend

God likes to make things. Remember, how he made the sun and the moon?  He made all the animals.  And he made people, too.  One thing he likes to make, that you like to make too, is friends.  God likes to make friends!  But, how can God make friends if He is invisible?  Invisible means you can't see him, but He is there.  How do you know He is there?  Sometimes you can just feel Him - like you know your mom has come into the room even though you can't see her.  When God is invisible, you can't see Him but sometimes you can feel Him in the room - we call that feeling His presence.  Not like a present that you open, but a presence, a feeling someone is there.  You could try being very quiet and then sneak up on someone and see if they can feel your presence!  God can be with you even if you can't see him, and sometimes he might say something to you.  God talked to Abraham.  God wanted Abraham to be his best friend.  He wanted Abraham to be his best friend forever.  If Abraham would be his friend, then God would do something for Abraham, too.  This is what God said: if Abraham wanted to be God's friend, he would have to do leave his home, his country, and his father's family, and travel to a new place that God would show him.  If he would do that, God would be his friend forever, and God said he would make Abraham into a daddy, too, with a big family.  How big would Abraham's family be?  God told him to go out in the middle of the night and look up into the sky at the stars.  How many stars are there?  Abraham started to count them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen.  There were so many stars that Abraham couldn't count them all. God said that's how many children, and grandchildren, and all their children there would be.  So many people in Abraham's family that you couldn't even count them.  How big would his family be?  Think about this.  Take a handful of sand like you get at the beach.  Look at all the little grains of sand.  Can you count them?  You can try, but you couldn't even count them all, it would take so long.  This was a very special promise to Abraham, that he would have a big family, because right now, he had no children at all.  He and his wife, Sarah, had tried to have children, but they didn't have even one baby.  So Abraham really wanted to believe God.  He knew God could make people, so God could make it happen for him and Sarah.   So, Abraham trusted God.  That means, he believed that God was telling the truth. So, he decided to be God's friend.  He packed up his wife, and his nephew and they started on their way.  They took tents with them so they could camp out.  They took animals with them, so they would have food to eat on the way.  They took some extra clothes, and their pajamas, and their toothbrushes, and Abraham believed God, and God and Abraham became friends.  Wow! Now, if one of your friends tells you to leave your home, and your mom and dad, don't you do it! Only God could tell you to do something so exciting.  What an adventure that would be - to go somewhere with God and not even know where you were going!