Monday, November 30, 2009
How many stars did Abraham see?
One of my favourite stories of the Old Testament is when God brought Abraham out of his shelter and told him to look up at the stars in the sky. There, He made the promise that Abraham will be blessed with descendants as countless as the stars.
For old, limp Abraham, he probably laughed his head off and paid little attention to God's wicked sense of humour, like how we'd react whenever we fail to grasp God's wisdom.
This encounter between God and Abraham is a simple story about trust. Doesn't take a bible scholar to figure that out. It does however, take a sharp mind to understand the depth of trust that Abraham had in God.
Each time I read this story, I'd picture in my mind a cloudless dark sky peppered with thousands and thousands of stars - a sight which unfortunately, is hard to come by in a city of bright lights like ours.
But if you read the entire chapter 15 of Genesis (especially verse 12), you'd realise that it is highly likely that when God brought Abraham out to see the stars, it was daytime. And if Abraham had looked up in the sky during the day, he wouldn't be able to see any stars, but that doesn't mean the stars weren't there. He simply couldn't see them.
And this is precisely why I love this passage so much! The author had turned an ordinary prose into something so poetic in nature and captured the essence of what Trust is: relying and having confidence in an invisible God, yet someone who is more real and trustworthy than any human being we know.
At times when we fail to see the big picture and desperately want to hang on to our human instincts, we need to learn to be like Abraham - to look out on a sunny day and trust that the stars are there, beyond the light.
All we need is a little patience.
Posted by Jo at 11:12 PM
