Abram/Abraham had to wait a while for God to fulfill his promise, but God still did. 25 years is a long time to wait for a kid when you’re 75 and your wife is 65, but wait they did, and laughed a bit, but mostly waited.
Luke 13:31-35; Philippians 3:17-4:1; Psalm 27; Genesis 15:1-18
You know what no one likes? Being patient. I know it sounds weird, but when it really comes down to it I think we can all admit that we don’t like to wait for things. I know I don’t! If someone tells me they’re getting me a present, I want it immediately. Oddly enough it works the other way too; if I get someone else a present, I want to give it to them immediately. I just get impatient.
Because of my own impatience, I can understand a bit of what Abram (who will later be Abraham) is going through. Back in chapter 12 of Genesis, God said to him, “I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you and whoever curses you I will curse; and all the peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” This is kind of a big thing, and I’d imagine it appealed to Abram a bit to know that he was going to be kind of important.
Fast forward a few chapters (and a few years) and Abram still doesn’t have any children. Given their cultural understanding, Abram would likely get a little skeptical of God’s promise of being a great nation when he didn’t have any children to become the nation. So when God showed up in chapter 15 and told Abram not to be afraid and that God was his shield and reward, it’s understandable that his response would be, “God, that’s all well and good, but I still don’t have any kids and my servant Eliezer is going to inherit everything!”, or to put it a bit more bluntly, “How come you haven’t done what you said you would yet?”
God’s response is rather simple. He tells Abram, “Look up at the heavens and count the stars – if you can indeed count them… So shall your offspring be.” Then something kind of amazing happened, something that actually had some long-standing repercussions – “Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness.”
Now, what’s a little cute about this, is that Abram believed God about the children, but then turned around and questioned God about taking posession of the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canannites, Girgashites, and Jebusites. So God performed a miracle to convince him.
But even after all that, Abram still had doubts. In the next chapter, Sarai, his wife, told Abram that since she couldn’t have children he should have children by Hagar. Then later, in chapter 18, when three men show up and tell Abraham (same guy, different name – full story in chapter 17) that his wife Sarah (same lady, different name – again, chapter 17) was going to have a child at the oh so spry age of ninety, she laughed, and for that matter so did Abraham a bit earlier. Then chapter 21 comes along and Sarah became pregnant and had a son, named Isaac, and God’s promise was fulfilled that Abraham and Sarah would have a child, and through Isaac, his son Jacob, and their descendants, the nation of Israel came to be.
There’s two things the story of Abraham shows us: first, it’s that when God promises something, it will happen; second, when God promises something, it might not happen at all how or when we expect it to happen. Abraham showed a good deal of faith and patience, even in the midst of his doubts, when it came to God’s promise – which took 25 years to fulfill.
Whenever I look at Abraham’s story, it both makes me feel better about my impatience and helps me to be more patient in waiting on God. If “even Abraham” expressed impatience and doubt, I’m encouraged when I have those thoughts. But I’m even more encouraged to know that, even if it takes a while, God will fulfill his promises – whatever they may be.