TUESDAY, APRIL 26
READ HEBREWS 11:8-16
HEBREWS 11:8 By trusting, Avraham obeyed, after being called to go out[Hebrews 11:8 Genesis 12:1] to a place which God would give him as a possession; indeed, he went out without knowing where he was going. 9 By trusting, he lived as a temporary resident in the Land of the promise, as if it were not his, staying in tents with Yitz’chak and Ya‘akov, who were to receive what was promised along with him. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with permanent foundations, of which the architect and builder is God.
11 By trusting, he received potency to father a child, even when he was past the age for it, as was Sarah herself; because he regarded the One who had made the promise as trustworthy. 12 Therefore this one man, who was virtually dead, fathered descendants
as numerous as the stars in the sky,
and as countless as the grains of the sand on the seashore.[Hebrews 11:12 Genesis 15:5–6; 22:17; 32:13(12); Exodus 32:13; Deuteronomy 1:10; 10:22]
13 All these people kept on trusting until they died, without receiving what had been promised. They had only seen it and welcomed it from a distance, while acknowledging that they were aliens and temporary residents on the earth.[Hebrews 11:13 1 Chronicles 29:15] 14 For people who speak this way make it clear that they are looking for a fatherland. 15 Now if they were to keep recalling the one they left, they would have an opportunity to return; 16 but as it is, they aspire to a better fatherland, a heavenly one. This is why God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.
Part of inward religion is our vision of God’s future. Faith is not only the “conviction of things not seen,” it is also “the substance of things hoped for” (11:1, KJV) because the things hoped for are things that have not yet been seen. The author of the epistle to the Hebrews goes on to illustrate this point in the rest of chapter 11 by giving examples of those who lived in hope of the unseen things that God had promised. Abraham and Sarah come first: Abraham set out for a place he had never seen; Sarah conceived a child in her old age, another event “not seen” beforehand.
On the one hand, our bodies and brains react against this idea: Synapses develop in our brains in such a way that old habits and old ways of thinking become familiar and comfortable, and we find it difficult to think beyond the things that we are accustomed to seeing. On the other hand, humans delight in breaking stereotypes and conventions. Part of the role that the visual arts play is to challenge the usual ways we think, to open up new connections and thoughts and possibilities for us. The visual arts help us to “see”—not that which is merely imaginary but that which has been “unseen” as yet.Part of the regular discipline of the spiritual life, then, must be to envision new futures that God intends for us. We are not eternally stuck in a cycle: God is already out front with new hopes and dreams and ideas. The challenge of faith is to allow ourselves (regularly!) to be startled by God’s surprising plans and to live according to that faith.
Give us grace, O God, to think new thoughts, dream new dreams, hope new hopes—even as you have thought and dreamed and hoped for us. And give us grace that we may live by your surprising vision. Amen.[Ted Campbell]
Our mailing address is:
The Upper Room Strategic Initiatives
PO Box 340007
Nashville, Tennessee 37203, United States
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