Initially God told Abraham, “Leave your country, your people and your
father’s household and go to the land I will show you.” (Genesis
12:1). And Abraham left without any idea
of where he was going. Abraham “set out” on a journey in obedience to God’s
command.
As children of Abraham we are
to be on a journey, following the prompting of the Holy Spirit, not knowing
where it will lead us or what we will experience.
Twenty-four years later God promised, “The whole land of Canaan where you are now
an alien, I will give as an everlasting possession to you and your descendants
after you.” (Genesis 17:8) Yet to their dying days, Abraham and Sarah were
sojourners and aliens in the promised land, living in tents. They lived with a promise but not the
realization of that promise. When Sarah died, Abraham’s neighbors told him
to take a plot of ground for her burial.
He insisted on paying for it because he said, “I am a stranger and sojourner among you; give me property among you for
a burying place that I may bury my dead. . . . I will give the price of the
field. . . “ (Genesis 23:4, 13).
Abraham was 75 years old when he received
the promise of a son. He was 100 years
old when he finally became a father. God makes Abraham and Sarah wait a very
long time and there’s a lot of ambiguity and probably a lot of anxiety waiting
for God to finally fulfill his promises. Abraham trusted in a future that
seemed impossible. Imagine hearing at age 75 that you are going to be the
father of a great nation and then trusting that promise for 25 more years. Abraham
and his wife Sarah received the son of promise Isaac. But a son did not make
them parents of many nations. They had
only tasted the first signs of that eventual fulfillment, just as establishing
residence in the land of promise did not mean they had actually become people
of that land.
Abraham and Sarah illustrate the trust and
obedience of a faith that lasts a
lifetime. Abraham's faith is never presented as a sudden heroic decision,
but something more like an undercurrent that directs and is directed by a
series of actions over time in the same direction, even when the ultimate
destination is unknown or seems impossible to attain. What a
wonderful reassurance that we are not called to succeed, but only to continue
the struggle, only to be faithful.
Is
our faith an undercurrent that directs and is directed by a series of actions
over time in the same direction? Yes,
I can see that in the actions of many of you!
An undercurrent that keeps you ready to see others’ needs and to respond
with caring. An undercurrent of servant leadership that keeps you working for
the well-being of the community without regard for personal rewards.
For Abraham and Sarah and their
descendants, the promise was a homeland, a land in which they would no longer
be strangers and foreigners, a land where they could faithfully worship their
God and live according to his law. This longing for a homeland sustained the
Jewish people for hundreds of years. Do
we also long for something more than what one can see in life?
“Now
faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”(Hebrews 11:1)
I’ve always loved that Bible verse. Some
of you may remember it’s on a plaque in my living room. But what does it mean to have faith in what cannot be seen? It
seems to me it means believing God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven
is a real possibility. It means living with the longing for the world Jesus
showed us, a world of healing and hope, compassion and caring, peace and
justice.
To live with an undercurrent of longing
for God’s Kingdom means refusing to accept that the world has always been like this.
Refusing to accept great disparities in wealth; refusing to accept self
interest as the only determinant of behavior; refusing to see caring for others
as a threat to our personal well-being; refusing to believe that satisfying our
needs is more important than preserving the planet. To live with an
undercurrent of longing for God’s Kingdom means always working to make the
world a better place.
It also means expecting that we may not
see that better place in our lifetime; expecting that we can only continue the
struggle and trusting that eventually the promise will be fulfilled.
There are some things that only God can
do. When we look at the rising tide of violence around the globe, the increasing
number of refugees, the widespread hunger, we realize that some of these
problems are so deep-seated that without God’s help they will not be solved. The
good news we Christians tell one another and tell the world is that God is
still actively at work in the world. God Holds the Future!
Our challenge is to figure out where God
is working and join in the struggle.
Holding onto God’s promises won’t be easy but we can trust that God will
take care of us as we struggle to be obedient to his direction. Life may be
risky and dangerous, but we can live without fear. The God who so loved all
those who witnessed to us in the Bible, will not abandon us NOR will he abandon
the world for which Jesus came, died and was risen. To live with the conviction of things not seen is to live with the
conviction that the cross is more powerful than the sword and that, in the end,
love will win.
Abraham and Sarah saw only glimmerings of
the eventual fulfillment of God’s promises. The story of Abraham and Sarah is a story of hardship and struggle,
persistence and HOPE. This is the faith that just keeping going day after
day, hanging on to the glimpses of God at work in the world and persisting in
spite of doubts and fears. Living in hope. The
faith of which the Bible speaks is fully in the world, but not of it.
(Romans 12:2)
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