Living Between the Promise and the Possibility
“Afterward the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you, and your reward will be great.” 2 But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since I don’t have a son, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. 3 You have given me no children, so one of my servants will have to be my heir.” 4 Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you.” 5 Then the Lord brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!” 6 And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord declared him righteous because of his faith.”
Genesis 15:1-6 (The New Living Translation, NLT)
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We live our lives between the promise of our potential and the possibility of our fulfillment. Somewhere in between where we are and where we want to be are challenges, opportunities, and choices. Sometimes we seem to be standing still, marking time as it were without any progress. Other times, we are sidestepping or backpedaling. Then, there are times that we take a few steps forward.
It has been said that life is a “promissory pilgrimage.” There is the promise of our potential as individuals; the promises people make to us; the promises we make to people; the promises employers make to employees; the promises nations make to their citizenry; the promises politicians make to their constituents; and the promises marital partners and friends make to each other.
Life is filled with promises of all sorts. Consider the products we buy. A basic promise is inherent in each one of them. Whether it is food, clothing, merchandise, jewelry, makeup or whatever it is, there is a promise that what you purchase will fulfill the purpose for which you bought it. As a matter of fact, what we buy is marketed to ignite the imagination about the promise of our possibility if we use this product. Some of the products live up to their claim and some of them don’t.
Consider what it means to live between the promise of your potential and the possibility of your fulfillment.
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This passage gets at this notion of promise and fulfillment. The story is related to Abram, the “father of the faithful.” The Lord has told Abram to leave his country, and go to a land that he would be shown with the promise that he would be made a great nation, he would be blessed, he would have a great name, and that the families of the earth would be blessed through him.
Abram sets out on this faith pilgrimage. He leaves Haran after his father, Terah, passes. He takes his wife, Sarah, and his nephew, Lot with him (Genesis 12:1-5). When he left, one thing after another happened. A famine occurs. Abram decides to go to Egypt. Afraid for his life, he compromises his wife’s virtue in Egypt. Because of this, God plagues Pharaoh and his house and Pharaoh asked Abram, Sarah, and Lot to leave. They leave Egypt taking a handmaiden named Hagar with them as they continue on their journey (Genesis 12:10-20). Abram and Lot separate. They could not dwell together. There was strife between the herdsmen of Abram’s cattle and the herdsmen of Lot’s cattle. The land was not able to bear them both. Abram tells his nephew “let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee and between my herdsmen and yours, for we are brothers. The whole land is before us. Whichever way you go I will go the opposite way. Lot chose the plain of Jordan and Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan. Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain and pitched his tent toward Sodom (Genesis 13:5-12). Then, Abram has to rescue Lot from captivity and is reunited again with his only blood kin in the world (Genesis 14:13-16).
Consider what it means that there are many twists and turns in the promissory pilgrimage through life that change our circumstances from moment to moment.
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Afterward, the Lord spoke to Abram in a vision and said to him, “Do not be afraid, Abram, for I will protect you and your reward will be great.”
Genesis 15:1
In this particular passage, Abram experiences the Lord in a vision telling him that I am your shield and great reward. Another way of saying this is, “I am your protection and provision.” Abram responds citing what is missing in his life. “What will you give me, seeing that I go childless, and the steward of my house is Eliezer of Damascus? Behold, to me you have not given a seed: and one born in my house is my heir.”
It is difficult at times to appreciate who the Lord is in our lives and what the Lord is doing for us when we are consumed with what is missing. I appreciate that you are my shield and great reward, but I still do not have an heir. I am still childless. Ten years have passed and still, the promise has not come to pass. The Lord reassures Abram that he will have an heir and reconfirms that his seed would be as numerous as the stars in heaven.
The unfolding scenario of this passage has a word about living between the promise and the possibility; living between where we are and where we want to be; living between the start and the finish; living between where we began and where we hope to end. We discover some things on our life’s faith journey.
Consider what it means to be disappointed when a promise is seemingly not fulfilled.
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2 But Abram replied, “O Sovereign Lord, what good are all your blessings when I don’t even have a son? Since I don’t have a son, Eliezer of Damascus, a servant in my household, will inherit all my wealth. 3 You have given me no children, so one of my servants will have to be my heir.” Genesis 15:2-3
On life’s faith journey, we find out that there is something missing in our lives that only God can provide. With all that Abram had, he did not have posterity and could not provide that for himself. Only God could do that. Abraham and Sarah were both getting beyond their child bearing years. The promise from their perspective is deferred. What they had expected has not occurred. They do not know when it will happen. Delay breeds frustration, which leads to doubt. Listen to Abram thinking to himself. Can’t you hear him? Of all the things I have, I don’t have what I want most. I can’t even appreciate what God is doing because I am so consumed and focused on what God hasn’t done. There is something I need God to do for me that only God can do.
This experience of Abram’s reminds us that there is something missing in our lives that only God can provide. Only God can provide security and surety that settles your spirit in times of doubt and disappointment. Only God can reassure you about the possibilities of your life when your dream is deferred and delayed and sometimes denied. Only God can sustain you through the worst of situations in which you do not think you can make it. Only God can broaden your vision beyond what is to the possibility of what can be. Only God can give that “peace which passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7).
Don’t look to others to give you what only God can give you. Look to the ineffable Presence that we sense but cannot see. Take time to nurture yourself spiritually seeking to connect to the call of eternity. Continue to fathom what it means to be made in the image and fashioned in the likeness of God with all of its possibility. Only God can satiate the longing in our soul for satisfaction. As St. Augustine said, "Our hearts are restless until we find our rest in Thee." The sweet lyricist of Israel says, “As the deer pants for water, so I long for you, O God.” Psalm 42:1 (The Living Bible)
Consider what it means that there are some things only God can provide for you.
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4 Then the Lord said to him, “No, your servant will not be your heir, for you will have a son of your own to inherit everything I am giving you.” 5 Then the Lord brought Abram outside beneath the night sky and told him, “Look up into the heavens and count the stars if you can. Your descendants will be like that—too many to count!” Genesis 15:4-5
On life’s faith journey, the Lord reassures us through our time of disappointment and doubt. As Abraham is contemplating his circumstance without an heir, the Lord has him get up, step out and look up to heaven. Abraham was focused on his situation. He was blinded by what was happening to him. He could not see beyond the immediate moment nor envision that his current situation does not necessarily reflect his future. Circumstances can circumscribe your understanding and distort your vision. So often we reduce God to the size of our circumstances and situations, instead of permitting God to increase our capacity to see beyond what is happening to the possibility of what can be. It is easy to see God and life through the narrow lens of our experience/s as opposed to recognizing that there is a beyond to what you are experiencing. Beyond what you are experiencing is the fulfillment of the promise that God has for you. There is the tendency to get stuck in the middle, caught by circumstances ebb, flow, and sway. How easy it is to get stuck in what creates a kind of quagmire that keeps you from moving forward. You may become stuck, as it were, in conditions that feel like quicksand. The more you struggle to get out, the further down you sink. This is when the Lord gets you up, has you step out, and look up!
Get up, step out and look up! Do not lay in your circumstantial dilemma and let it continue to distress you. Get up! Do not remain captive by what limits you. (1) Get up. You have to make the effort to get beyond what is keeping you from rising above what you are going through. First, the Lord gets you up. (2) Then, the Lord has you to step out of the control of your circumstances so that you are not limited by what they suggest. Step out of the grasp of what keeps you frustrated. Do not permit what is happening to you to define you. Step out of it. Get up, and step out! (3) Finally, look up! Look up beyond your immediate surroundings. There is a beyond that is yet to be that is calling you to open your eyes and see. Look up to heaven. Set your gaze higher than what limits your life and outlook. Fix your focus on the possibility that God has for your life. Get up! Step out! Look up! God directs our attention beyond our circumstance/s to what our lives can be with Him. Whatever your life is, it can be much more with what God promises it can become.
Look up. Let God show you something. Let God show you the starry heaven. The starry heaven is an affirmation that God can get you beyond the immediate moment to the fulfillment of the promise of your life. God made the heavens, speckling it with stars to shine like diamonds in the night against the nocturnal canopy that hangs, as it were, on the rafters of nothing. God put the stars there. Looking up will help to enlarge your understanding of God and God’s capacity. Look up and see the handiwork of the Lord. Look up and get a sense of what God can do. Looking up refocuses your attention from what is happening around you to what can happen in you, with you, to you, and through you with God. Your seed will be as numerous as the stars in heaven. You can’t count them and neither will you be able to count your seed. Look up! God is not defined by your circumstance/s. Look up! God directs your attention beyond your circumstance/s to your potential and possibility. Look up!
Consider what it means to get up, step out and look up beyond the situation in which you are engulfed, to see the potential and possibility of the fulfillment of your promise.
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6 And Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord declared him righteous because of his faith.” Genesis 15:6
Maybe, I guess, it would be nice if in every instance we could have measurable outcomes so that we could say that what we attempted was actually achieved. However, that is just not the case. Teachers may or may not, all of the time, get to see the seeds they sow in students come to fruition. Parents may or may not, all of the time, get to see the investment they made pay off as they desired and their children fulfilling their purpose in the world. Sometimes you just have to trust God for the outcome. Do what faith leads you to do and trust God for the outcome.
Abraham never saw all that the Lord had promised him. Abraham and Sarah in their doubt decided that the Lord needed their expertise in fulfilling the promise God had made. Abram has a child by Hagar who is named Ishmael. When they put their hand in it, they discovered that God always does what God says. Sarah conceives and bears the promised child, Isaac. Ishmael is run out into the wilderness with his mother and it appears that he never see his father again.
Abraham had to wait twenty-five years for Isaac to be born. He was seventy-five when the promise was made. He was one hundred when Isaac was born. Sarah dies. Abraham helps in finding Isaac a wife. Abraham marries again and has more children (Genesis 25:1-4). Abraham gives all he has to Isaac. He lives to be a hundred threescore and fifteen years (175) and dies. The measurable outcome was not fulfilled during his lifetime. He died before he could see his descendants as numerous as the stars in the heaven and his seed as the dust of the earth. The writer of Hebrews says, “These all died in the faith not having received the promises but having seen them afar off, were persuaded by them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth” (Heb. 11:13). Abraham died in faith, trusting God for the outcome.
We are still waiting for the fulfillment of our nation to rise up and live out it creed that “All people are created equal and endowed with certain unamiable rights, among them life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Given the recent voter suppression laws that have been upheld by the Supreme Court, we are still fulfilling the fifteenth amendment giving people a right to vote.
Consider what it means to wait through disappointment and delay and still embrace the possibility of the promise that you embrace.
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Abraham reminds us that we just have to keep on going in faith and trusting God day by day. While he never saw the fulfillment of the promise, God did bring it to pass. From Abraham’s seed, three faiths have been birthed: Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Judaism has 14 million adherents, Islam 1.3 billion adherents, and Christianity 2.1 billion adherents. Abraham’s seed is truly as numerous as the stars in heaven and like the dust on the face of the earth.
Our history is replete with instances of ancestors who did not get to see the fulfillment of the promise of our nation. But there was a posterity that got to see it, reminding us of the passage in Hebrews 11:13, “These all died in the faith not having received the promises but having seen them afar off, were persuaded by them and embraced them and confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth.”
Abraham reminds us that we just have to keep on believing, trusting that God will keep God’s promise. Regardless of how long you have to wait, keep on believing! Despite the circumstances, keep on believing! In the face of challenges, keep on believing! When tested, tempted, and tried, keep on believing! When you experience losses, keep on believing! Keep getting up, stepping out, and looking up. “The moral arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice.”
The songwriter says I feel like going on. I feel like going on. Though trials come on every hand, I feel like going on.
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Conclusion
Just keep on going in trust. God will bring to pass what God must. Just keep on going and trusting in the Lord. Say with the composer, I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord, till I die. I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord, till I die. When the going gets rough just say, Father, I stretch my hands to thee. No other help I know. If thou withdraw thyself from me, whether shall I go? I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord till I die. I will trust in the Lord. I will trust in the Lord, till I die.
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