Abram's calling was a very important one, which has always made readers curious about Abram's background and previous experience with God.
Joshua 24:2 suggests that one of the things Abram had to leave behind was idolatry. There is a large body of tradition that takes this verse as a jumping-off point. (A good source on this tradition is David Klinghoffer's book The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism--Doubleday, 2003). In one such tradition, Abram's father was an idol maker, but Abram, like a philosopher, considered the heavens and reasoned that there must be a single Creator who had made the heavenly bodies and set them in motion. After coming to this conviction, he tried to convince his family of the truth of monotheism. At one point he broke all the idols in his father's shop except one and then told his father that the remaining idol had destroyed the others. His father did not believe this assertion, and Abram asked him to reflect upon why he didn't believe it.
A further tradition has Abram persecuted by Nimrod and placed in a fiery furnace like Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednego.
In a sermon on Seder 10, David Waddle noted that in effect, Abram in accepting God's call had bought a one-way ticket without a known destination. He placed his future in God's hands. He left behind his key attachments, having faith that God would take care of him.
New Testament descriptions of the Christian calling---e.g. Luke 14:26-33---suggest that those who decide to become disciples of Jesus are making a similar life-changing decision.
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