Abram and Faith

After a bunch of false starts this weekend, I finally got started with Genesis.

Being familiar stories, it can sometimes be difficult to read them with new eyes. But I was struck by something about Abram that seems obvious but is pretty amazing: his Faith!

God tells Abram to go and he'll be given land, and he goes. This is a pretty stupendous claim. Traveling to strange lands must have been quite hard back then. Lands had been tamed since the time Cain's son built Enoch, the first city. There's no doubt that leaving the relative security of the settled land of your birth is a dangerous thing. Abram is so terrified of the Egyptians that he asks Sarai to pretend to be his sister, lest he face certain death.

And yet given all the perils, Abram goes. Not only that, he builds altars along the way, as a way to glorify God on his journey. Truly, this is a man of great faith.

Things get even more difficult for Abram. God shows up in a dream and says "Fear not for I am you shield, and your reward shall be very great." I can imagine my reaction to such a statement: I'm going to get a bunch of money? A huge house? Any of those would be a great reward, and also quite hard to believe.

But God goes even further and tells him his descendants will number like the stars. And Abram believes! It's an impossible claim. Impossible to imagine for an old man with an old wife. Impossible . . . unless God is God.

But the Good News for Abram and for all of us, is that God really is God. He is the Greatest and for Him all things are possible. And not only are all things possible, but when we ask for what is good, as when Abram asks for a descendant, our wants are provided for a thousand times over.

And God is willing to do all these works in our lives. He will give to us all the good things we want in life. We only have to follow Abram's example: ask first, and believe when you hear God say yes!