God & hard things

For the past several weeks, our Sunday school class has been studying Abraham—both his original story in the Old Testament book of Genesis and the reverberation of his story in the New Testament book of Hebrews' "Roll Call of Faith." The curriculum was written by an enormously insightful minister friend of mine, Gary Long, pastor of First Baptist Church in Gaithersburg, Md.

I've always loved Abraham's story. For starters, he was The Starter. Humanly speaking, everything Christians, Jews and Muslims know of faith begins with Abraham. 

Abraham was a person who consistently listened to God and obeyed. He didn't have the benefit of millennia of Godward thinking. No Old Testament. No New Testament. No generations of faithful ancestors. He didn't have a track record with God. And yet he listened, believed and followed God.

It wasn't enough that God asked him to pack up and move away from his family, his hometown and everything familiar. It wasn't enough that he accepted God's promise of a land that, when he finally got there, was inhabited by people who weren't familiar with God's promise to Abraham and weren't keen on the idea of giving their land away.

On top of all this, God promised Abraham: "I will make you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great; and so you shall be a blessing; … and in you all the families of the earth will be blessed." Later, God told Abraham: "Walk before me and be blameless, and I will make my covenant between me and you, and I will make you exceedingly numerous. You shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations."

That sounds pretty terrific. Problem was, Abraham and his wife, Sarah, were childless. The Bible—which pretty consistently blames women for infertility—calls Sarah "barren." Also, they were old. Abraham was 99, and Sarah was 90.

So, when the Lord specifically promised Abraham that Sarah would get pregnant and give birth to a son in her 91st year, Sarah did a fairly predictable thing. She laughed. The Bible doesn't say if her laughter was full of mirth or sarcasm or maybe simple incredulity.

But then the Lord asks the question that has been at the center of Abraham and Sarah's life, particularly since all these grandiose promises started coming their way: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" 

Apparently, Abraham believed otherwise, because, sure enough, he was a daddy before the year passed. 

But later, when that miracle child, Isaac, was a young boy, God asked for Isaac back. God told Abraham to take his son up on Mount Moriah and offer him as a sacrifice. And Abraham obeyed. The Scripture says Isaac carried the firewood while Abraham carried the knife and the fire. On the hike up the mountain, the boy asks his father, "Where is the lamb for the burnt offering," to which Abraham replies, "God will provide."

I can't help but think that, even as his heart was breaking, Abraham kept remembering the question: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" as he bound his son, laid him on the firewood, placed his hand over his child's face and raise the knife high to plunge it into the boy's chest.

"Is anything too hard for God?" If God could open the womb of a barren 90-year-old woman so she could bring forth a child to a 99-year-old man, then God can do anything God wants. If God could give Isaac to Sarah and Abraham, then God could give them another child. Or, better yet, God could give Isaac to them again.

So, Abraham started to offer his only son as a sacrifice to his only God, until God stopped him and provided a ram for the sacrifice. 

Abraham remained faithful to God, and God remained faithful to Abraham. All those promises about blessing Abraham, about becoming the father of many nations, about blessing the whole world with his family. It all came true.

In our class, we talked about the difference between long-ago Abraham and about us today. We debated whether Abraham heard an actual voice from God or if Abraham "heard" just as we "hear" God inaudibly as we pray today.

God is the same God, throughout all the ages. And, although we're not Abraham, we're his spiritual heirs, and we're made of the same human stuff as Abraham and Sarah. 

The pivot point is that Abraham believed nothing is too hard for God. And the pivot point of our lives turns on whether we believe that, too.