After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, "Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great." But Abram said, "O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir." But the word of the Lord came to him, "This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir." He brought him outside and said, "Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your descendants be." And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.When we think of barrenness, we tend to think of a childless couple who desperately want a baby. Something that is seemingly natural, that happens to the unprepared by accident all the time, is out of reach. Genesis 15:1-6 discusses literal barrenness, but also invites us to consider God's response to other types of fruitlessness.
Have you ever invested a lot of time, energy, money, or emotions into something that just didn't work? Maybe you put a lot of time into a relationship that ended in a fight and a bonfire of the belongings they left at your place. Maybe in the prime of your life you got sick: you were supposed to be healthy, and now you're fighting cancer, degenerative disease, or chronic pain. Maybe you suffered through a failed business venture, depression, or addiction. Your life was supposed to go a certain way, and it just didn't work out, leaving you feeling bereft, lost, or hopeless. This must be something like what Abram and Sarai were feeling when at 100 and 90 years old respectively, there was no heir, no land, no hope. After receiving a promise that they would have a child, they were skeptical. God promised them an heir who would make them the parents of a great nation, but they were, shall we say, a little past their prime and still there were no pitter-pattering little feet. The more time passed, the more they doubted.
But like God tends to do, God intervened on this situation which was quickly degenerating and took Abram aside and showed him the stars, poetically describing a highly improbable future to an old man without hope. I think when we read this passage, a lot of times we're tempted to hold Abram up as an amazing example of good faith, and praise him for believing God's promise, and tell ourselves we should have just a little bit of faith like that because good Christians trust God. In reality, Abram wasn't exactly a paragon of faith. God called Abram out of his homeland where he and Sarai journeyed, but when they got to Egypt, Abram didn't really trust that God would keep them safe so he offered his wife to the king to protect himself. In fact, he did this twice! And despite this conversation in chapter 15, in the very next chapter we hear about the birth of Ishmael, Abram's son through his wife's servant Hagar. Abram is faithful in the same way that polar bears build bonfires. So why does God reckon his faith as righteousness?
I think the answer isn't in Abram's words or actions, because his actions clearly demonstrate his difficulty trusting God. And who can blame the guy? When you're feeling physically, spiritually, or emotionally barren, it's pretty darn hard to trust that everything will be okay. You look into the future which is derived from your current barrenness, and see only more barrenness. I think in order to understand how Abram's faithlessness could be considered righteousness, we need to look at what God did. Abram did little or nothing to receive God's promise, and God not only gave them a son despite all Abram and Sarai's failings, but also gave Abram the strength to believe what God had said. In other words, even in the midst of impressive lack of trust, God appeared with a Word which imparted the faith that was needed for the promise to be received.
So how does this relate to us? Mostly what I think it says is in what it doesn't say. It doesn't say just have faith and things will work out. It doesn't say that God expects perfect, obedient servants all the time. And it definitely doesn't say that we can earn our way to promise. What it says is that even those God highly favors are flawed, lack trust, and even disobey at times. More importantly, it assures us that even when we are in the midst of our barren times, God imparts faith so that we can take the next step when we don't have another ounce of strength, and so we can cling to hope when all seems lost. Theologian Walter Bruegemann writes: “The ones who are barren and hopeless become the practitioners of faith. They are the ones who do not doubt the promise and so allow the new age to surge upon them.” I think this paradoxical statement means that when we are the most faithless, when we have lost the strength to even doubt, let alone trust, that's when God finds us. We may not always trust God, but God knows what has been promised, and God will give us the faith necessary to carry us through our barren desert of death, hopelessness, illness, pain, or brokenness into a new future of health, joy, peace, and resurrection.
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