Learning to trust is a process. As we have followed Abraham’s story we can see how his faith in God surges forward for a moment only to reset to a position where Abraham acts as though he must rely on himself.
Abraham’s tale begins with a huge statement of trust: he moves his whole household to a new place at God’s urging (Genesis 12:4). When, years later, he complains that the Lord hasn’t provided a child, God’s immediate reassurance rekindles Abraham’s faith and the narrative tells us that he believes anew in the Lord’s promises (Genesis 15:6).
Eventually we have come to the point in this saga where God explains that the promised son is not Ishmael, but will be a child of Abraham’s marriage – born to his elderly wife Sarah. God proclaims the news twice to insure that Abraham and Sarah get the message. The angel news bearers even answer the couple’s incredulity with a wonderful reminder of God’s power: “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14).
Next God works to intensify Abraham’s trust by inviting the Patriarch to weigh in on the Sodom and Gomorrah question.
But even when God demonstrates this willingness to trust Abraham, our ancestor can’t sustain his belief. Right on the heels of the amazing news that Sarah would bear a child, Abraham instantly falls back to fending for himself.
The story told in Genesis 20 in which Abraham sojourns in the city of Gerar shows us the Patriarch lying to King Abimelech that Sarah is his sister. It seems like a rerun of the incident told in Genesis 12:10-20 when Abraham also lied about Sarah during the famine.
But we would think that Abraham would have had more faith by now. Instead, when the foreign king asks in astonishment, “What have I ever done to you that you would bring on me and my kingdom this huge offense?” (Genesis 20:9), Abraham responds so feebly: “I just assumed that there was no fear of God in this place and that they’d kill me to get my wife” (Genesis 20:11).
How could the God who is powerful enough to quicken Sarah’s womb in her old age, fail to protect Abraham against a foreign king?
Yet, isn’t this exactly the way we respond time and again to each new obstacle that appears in our path?
But God doesn’t give up on us just as the Lord didn’t lose faith in Abraham. What appears next in the Patriarch’s story more than validates that trust.
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