Hope From Ashes

Read: Psalm 105:1-42; Exodus 33:1-6; Romans 4:1-12

The Lenten journey is a long one. Forty days doesn’t sound like a long time at the beginning of it, but if you’ve adopted any kind of spiritual or ascetic discipline for Lent, now’s about the time you start wondering if you made a mistake.

I wonder how many times Abraham wondered if he made a mistake.

His story starts in Genesis 12 with a call and a promise from God: a call to “go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you,” and in return, God promises, “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you.” Abraham answers God’s call and begins his journey to the Promised Land in faith that God will give him children, even though his wife, Sarah, was unable to have children.

Paul says in our passage from Romans that this faith, this trust in God, this willingness to pick up and move, not even knowing where he’s moving to, is what made Abraham the father of all his children—his literal descendants, who honor Abraham as their father by circumcising their children as he did, and his children in the faith, who honor Abraham as their father by trusting in the same God he did. “Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness.” So straightforward! So easy! Just believe!

But it’s pretty obvious from all the chapters from Genesis 12, when God calls Abraham, to Genesis 21, when the promised son is finally born, that Abraham’s journey of faith was not a straightforward or easy one. It was full of missteps, confusion, loss, grief, pain, and doubt.

There’s some comfort in that, isn’t there? Abraham is not only a model of faith when he trustingly picks up and leaves his home without knowing where God was sending him. He is also a model of faith when he doubts God—or, rather, when he trusts God with his doubts about God. Abraham asks God for reassurance, complains that God hasn’t yet given him a child, even laughs at the idea of his 90-year-old wife bearing him a son. God is not fazed by Abraham’s doubts. God doesn’t say, “Well, picking Abraham was obviously a mistake; let’s drop him and find someone more trusting.” God was faithful, even when Abraham doubted. Abraham was not blessed because he was perfectly faithful, but because God was.

Prayer:

Almighty God, in whom our father Abraham trusted, you keep faith with your people even when they fail. Forgive our shortcomings, assuage our fears, answer our doubts, assure us of your loving presence, and grant us a vision of the hope you have promised us. We ask these things through Jesus Christ, our righteousness and peace. Amen.