Do you see what I see?
Abraham must have been very troubled about something in Genesis 15 because God comes to assure him that he has no need to be afraid. “I’m your shield,” he tells the troubled man, "and in and through me you will be greatly rewarded.” That’s all very well, but can you take words to the bank, can you buy a grave to lay your wife in without silver?
Abraham wanted to know if God saw the things he was seeing. “Do you see what I see?” he might have said. “I have no child of my own and a servant is going to inherit all I have or might end up having. My body is old—look at me—and I’m getting older. Look at Sarah—“come here a minute sweetheart”—she’s barren. My situation’s desperate and prospects range from bleak to non-existent—that’s the world I’m looking at.”
The text says God took him outside and showed him the stars (did the “man” have his arm around Abraham’s shoulders?). “Can you count those?” Have a look some night when you’ve nothing else to do in a hurry and get something of the sense of it. Of course he couldn’t. “You won’t be able to count the number of your children either,” God tells him.
Despite the host of torn-off pages of the calendar, even in the face of his wife’s barrenness and his sense that his body (though not especially old) was ageing and despite the visible presence of the servant Eliezer the old man believed God. He took a long hard look at them all, turned and looked at God and said, “I believe you.”
And God wrote a note to himself. “He's righteous!”
It makes it easier that all that is covered in only six verses. It doesn’t seem to last as long, the trouble is over quickly. But it was a long haul. Still, the old man took God at his word!
And what is it that you look at? What are the difficulties that face you? What’s the situation that leads you to want to say to God, “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” Poor hurting soul, who must carry an awful burden for what seems like half of forever. I pray that by God’s strong grace you’ll be able to look at life with steady eyes and turn and tell God you believe him, that you’ll commit your life and your future to his care. This is moral heroism and these are the kind of people of whom the world is not worthy (Hebrews 11:38).
God bless you.
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