Faith Like Abraham's

January cold spell. Winter blanketing the earth with a coat of white. Trees stretching barren limbs outward. Colorful blooms in the garden long since faded away. But spring and summer will come again. We know they will even though there is no current evidence of verdant life.

That's faith! Free of doubts because we've experienced this "rebirth" of nature all the years of our lives.

But what about those unseen burdens we carry? The AWOL grandson, the antagonistic brother, the deeply personal concerns... Do we have the same faith, free of doubts? Can we trust God because of answered prayers throughout our lives? Is it possible for human beings to trust that completely no matter what, no matter how long, even without evidence that God is working behind the scenes?

The Bible is filled with examples of men and women who took God at His word, who believed his promises even when they did not see their fulfillment. Hebrews 11 lists many of them. But I'm thinking of just one example as I write this morning.

By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called

to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance.

And he went out, not knowing where he was going.

By faith he went to live in the land of promise,

as in a foreign land,

living in tents with Isaac and Jacob,

heirs with him of the same promise.

For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, 

whose designer and builder is God.

By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive,

even when she was past the age,

since she considered him faithful who had promised.

These all died in faith,

not having received the things promised,

but having seen them and greeted them from afar,

and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth.

Hebrews 11:8-11, 13

Think about that! Abraham, with his wife and nephew, left everything and everyone he knew to go where God led with no idea of what it would be like. No Google Earth. No enticing photographs.  Just God's promise of a new land for him and his progeny. Yet in that land, he never owned more than the tomb where he buried Sarah his wife. 

I saw an advertisement on television that said we Americans move an average of 11 times in our lives. I counted up the times my husband and I have moved and came to 11! But I realized later that I had forgotten another very temporary home between moves, so that made 12. I am thankful that we were in one place for 23 years and that we have now been here for 12 years. I don't ever want to move again! This is home and I just want to stay settled here.

Abraham and Sarah didn't have that. They lived in tents! There was nothing truly permanent about their dwelling place. None of the security I long for in living in one place, among the friends I make, in the church where I worship and serve, in the community I've come to love. 

In Genesis 15, God established His covenant with Abraham, who was then known as Abram. God told Abraham to try to count the stars and to believe that his offspring would be as numerous. This was when he was yet childless and expecting to make one of his servants his heir. He was aging and the prospects of having his own son seemed less and less likely. Yet, "he believed the Lord and He counted it to him as righteousness" (Genesis 15:6).

I look back at the Hebrews passage and am reminded that Abraham died without seeing all of God's promises fulfilled. Yes, Isaac was born to him in his old age. That was one promise fulfilled in a most miraculous way, which surely encouraged his faith.  But what I glean from Hebrews is that Abraham was living with an eternal perspective (Hebrews 11:10)! 

Even as I pray for the grandson who has turned his back on God and family, my concern is for his eternal soul. I long to see him reunited with family, but more important is his walk with God. I'm his grandparent; I may not live to see God's answer to this prayer, although I hope I will. Can I trust God with His answer all the way to my grave? The burden is heavier at times than others, as are my other prayer concerns. Yet I take comfort even as I watch the answers come to the prayers of others, as I think about the many prayers I have prayed that God has answered. I want the faith of Abraham that believes without sight, that trust when all seems hopeless, that rests on God's promises.

[Read Abraham's complete story in Genesis 12-25]