Parsha_Push Lech Lecha

“And there was a famine in the land, and Abram went down to Egypt to dwell there.” This verse presents us with one of the central dilemmas for a believer. Rashi thinks this was a test for Abraham “to test whether he would question God’s words”. Abraham passed the test by going down to Egypt to sustain himself, without questioning God who had told him to go to the land of Israel, even though now it was impossible to dwell there. In contrast, according to Ramban, Abraham’s departure from the land was a sin, because he should have trusted in God “for God will redeem us from death in famine.”
This question – whether when a person pursues an important goal and encounters obstacles along the way, they should strengthen themselves against these obstacles or understand that these obstacles are meant to alter their course or stop them from continuing troubles many people. Throughout the generations, people have wanted God to speak to them, and they try to understand what He is telling them. Both on a personal level (“What does it mean that I missed the bus on the way to do something?”) and on a national level (“Is the Balfour Declaration like Cyrus’s Declaration or is it Satan’s work like ‘Baal Peor’?”).
And how will we know? Maybe we won’t.
Maybe without an explicit divine statement, we will need to continue exercising judgment and thinking for ourselves, based on the information available to us, about what is right and wrong.
The fact that God does not direct us at every crossroad, might hint that He would like us to be thinking beings, weighing the pros and the cons, striving to pursue God’s wishes, but also acting on our instincts, intellect and moral sensitivies.