Abraham and Sarah

          By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. (Hebrews 11:8 – 12)

           When we first met Abraham in Genesis, he was living in Ur. God told him to leave his homeland and his people and go where He led him. He promised to give him a great land and the numerous and countless descendants described in today’s passage. He also promised that through Abraham, all nations would be blessed. He was about seventy-five when he was given those promises, and he was a hundred when Isaac was born. By the time Abraham died, his descendants numbered fewer than a hundred, possibly fewer than two dozen.
           The only land he ever owned, he bought from a Canaanite as a burial place for Sarah. He was called on to kill Isaac, through whom the promises were to be fulfilled.
          Abraham and Sarah had good reason to not hope. They were too old to start a family by the time their family comes along. Abraham had good reason to not hope later when God commanded that he kill Isaac. How did they keep believing when everything logical was stacked against them? How did they throw common sense to the winds and step out on nothing? 
          First, they’d already started the journey. They left Ur and wandered to Canaan. God had guided and cared for them. So they weren’t really dealing with blind leaps of faith. They had encountered God, so they didn’t sit around debating whether or not He exists. In their experience of God, they came to understand how powerful omnipotence is, so how could death be a problem?
          There’s another factor here. Abraham was a shepherd owner of livestock. He knew that if he had a ram and bought a ewe, in the space of a few years, he’d have more rams and ewes. He didn’t need to have lots of kids in order to have descendants that outnumbered the stars and sand. One was enough to fulfill the promise.
          I find myself wondering what about my past gives me reason to have faith. The first thing that comes to mind is the guidance I’ve experienced. That lesson isn’t likely to go away easy even if I despair that I’m not getting enough guidance. Another, I think, is the lack of fear I have about death after having walked up to that door with my parents. Here’s a third. I have read and been blessed by things that were written before I was born, by people who died before I read their words. What I write isn’t just for my contemporaries. I need to write for the ages.
           I’m not sure what that means. I don’t know what the equivalent would be for your life, but it’s something that deserves thought.