Genesis 15:5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” (ESV)
Abram and Sarai were the family God chose to build his city. But they were just learning what that meant. It didn’t mean they got all the best stuff. Quite the opposite. They’d given all the good stuff away. Abram and Sarai did not get the best farmland or grazing pastures. They did not get the newest toys or the biggest homes. Instead, they lived on a scrubby little farm growing scrubby little crops. And God promised to preserve this land for them and their descendants forever.
Now, it might not seem all that great to be promised mediocre land forever and ever and ever. But Abram and Sarai were going to make the most of what they had. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t all terrible. There were even some really nice trees in one spot. So that’s where they decided to live and work. And they did work. And work. And work and work and work. They worked so hard because they had to. Or else they’d starve.
And while Abram and Sarai had to carefully plow the earth and place seeds in the dirt and water the land to get even small sprouts to appear, Lot’s family could throw seeds into the wind, and wherever they landed, they grew tall and bright. And the family of Lot looked at the green growth and the streams of water and praised God. “Thank you for giving us this practically perfect land!” they said. And they thought, “We are the lucky ones.”
But good land is easy to covet. And before long, several armies had arrived to take the land from Lot and his family. And Lot and his wife and his daughters were captured and carried away as prisoners, and they would have been sold into slavery if Abram hadn’t run to rescue them.
And after Abram’s daring rescue, Lot’s family returned to their beautifully fertile land, and Abram returned to his scorched, brown world. But he didn’t feel even a little sorry for himself. On the contrary, he thought he was the lucky one. God had given them this land forever because bad land is safe land. Armies don’t fight over wasteland. So while it was harder to grow food, God was protecting them and their future children from other people, armies, and jealousies. This way, they would never be captured, or carried away as prisoners, or sold into slavery.
“This is exactly why it pays to follow God,” Abram thought. “Because God is smart and wise and far-sighted. He will always keep us safe, thank goodness.”
But that night, God visited Abram in his dreams. “Abram,” said God, “I have something to show you.” And God showed Abram that even though he had bad land, that still wasn’t going to keep his family safe. In fact, his descendants would be forced into slavery. And they’d remain slaves for 400 years. His family would suffer injustice and inhumanity, hunger and humiliation.
This wasn’t a dream, it was a nightmare! And a very confusing nightmare at that. What was the point of following God if it didn’t make life safer or simpler? “God,” thought Abram, “you don’t make this easy.”
God just smiled. “I haven’t finished,” he said. “After 400 years, they will escape and be free again. And they will be wealthy but not just with money. They will be rich with things like knowledge and experience. They will remember their slavery. And they will invent new ways for how to treat people. They will write new laws that encourage honesty, fairness, kindness, and charity. Laws that challenge the powerful and give resources to the poor. Laws that treat everyone with dignity, because they will believe that all people deserve freedom, even the poorest and most insignificant. And they will build societies that try to live by these laws. And they will have to work hard, very hard. And they will fail a lot. But eventually, they will create a new nation. My nation. And this family, community, city, nation — they will change the world.”
Abram woke from his dream with a gasp. And he realized two things that were definitely, absolutely true. First, with or without God, life was always going to be full of pain and sorrow and unfairness. There was no getting around it. Following God wasn’t going to solve all his problems or his children’s problems. It wouldn’t make him lucky or unlucky.
Second, being lucky or unlucky wasn’t the point. You don’t follow God because it makes your life easy or protects you from hurt or unfairness or blisters or burns. It doesn’t. God wasn’t trying to make some people rich and others poor. God was building a family. A city. A city that was like a family where people would take care of each other. And they’d help the poor, comfort the sad, and make sure everyone had food to eat and friends to play with. And living this way would make bad luck less scary and good luck less necessary. Because people would always be there to help, no matter what.
And God explained that Abram was going to be the father of this family. And soon he’d have tons and tons of children. Abram could see them now. This family would grow and grow with babies becoming children becoming adults becoming parents having more babies and more babies and more babies, no end in sight. There would be more people than there is sand on the beach. And they would grow bigger, and kinder, and better. Each person sharing their light with each other until they lit up the night sky, like a canopy of a million, billion, trillion stars.
This was going to be one large, forever-growing family. There was just one problem. Abram and Sarai couldn’t get pregnant.
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