Today I was reading from Hebrews. There is a passage about faith. It starts, ‘Faith is confidence about what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see’. This is a letter written after Jesus has risen to early Christians who would have known the Patriachs, the men from the old testament who showed faith. And so it goes on to list different people who showed faith in the way they behaved, choosing to believe in God’s word.
It’s quite a list. It includes Abel who brought the best of his lambs as an offering and was then killed by his brother our of jealousy. It includes Noah who built a massive ship and rescued his family and all the animals. It does include some impressive feats of faith-based action. But there are two that stand out to me. One is Sarah, wife of Abraham.
‘And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.’ That’s not quite how I remember it. Looking back in Genesis, Abraham and Sarah are sitting in their camp when three visitors appear. Abraham tells Sarah to prepare some food and then goes and speaks to the visitors. They say that they will visit again next year and his wife will have a son. Sarah, listening from inside the tent, laughs in disbelief because she is too old. That doesn’t sound like someone who believed the promise.
And yet, she did have a son as God had promised. She may laugh at first, but in the end she does trust God’s promise and God follows through. In her heart she knew him to be faithful even if her head said otherwise.
Back to Hebrews. The second person is Moses. ‘By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.’ Again, I remember the story slightly differently.
Back in Exodus, Moses is raised in Pharoah’s household but then sees an Egyptian hitting and Israelite slave and kills the Egyptian. It then specifically says, ‘Moses was afraid. “What I’ve done must have become known.” Then he fled from Pharoah.’ Pharoah did try to kill him so you can understand fleeing, but I would definitely say that Moses feared the king’s anger.
And yet, out in exile in the desert, Moses finds God speaking to him out of a burning bush. He did literally see him who was invisible and followed his instructions (if little reluctantly at first).
I don’t say this to pick holes in bible heroes. Actually, the complete opposite. There bible heroes were very human. Disbelief and fear are things we feel all the time, and sometimes the promises of God can be overshadowed by those or other emotions. And that’s OK. Both Moses and Sarah knew who God was. Deep down, they trusted him. Maybe their immediate actions weren’t motivated by faith, but their lives were.
In the big picture of their lives, the overarching theme that they are remembered for is that they lived ‘by faith’. They kept their eyes focused on God (most of the time). Having confidence in what we hope for doesn’t mean never doubting or questioning. It means choosing to hold the hope in the midst of the doubting, choosing to acknowledge the logical doubts in our minds whole feeding the flame of hope in our hearts. It doesn’t mean we aren’t affected by what we see around us. It means holding on to the belief that God keeps his promises and there is better coming and choosing to look beyond while we are being battered by what’s right in front of us.
If you’ve doubted or if you’ve acted out of fear or anger, that doesn’t mean you don’t have faith. If Sarah and Moses can inspire because of their faith, then so can we.
The Reason for my Hope Blog 