A promise is a promise even for old men.

Promises. We hear people making promises all the time about what they will do, how they will act, how they will repent even when they are in trouble... you know the kind of promise I am talking about! O God if you’ll get me out of this I’ll... Promises come from different places and spaces telling us that we need this or that o make our lives complete. Our lives won’t be better until we purchase this item. And this item will be backed with more promises of fulfillment is backed up will all kinds of promises about what will happen and what the product will do for us and how long it might last.

The thing about promises made by people in this world, in this life is that they are at best, temporary. They are made whole heartedly and with the best of intentions but in the end the promises are only as strong as the person who made them. Does that make me sound cynical? Perhaps. But then I think about the promises that God has made to people in the past and how he has and continues to fulfill those promises right up to this moment.

Let’s take Abraham as an example. He had a real challenge in that he didn’t have a pattern to follow like we have. He was going totally by faith and by feel through his relationship with God. And there were times in his life when he let fear come in and when he would decide for himself where he was going to find and take his bread. It led him in to a life of compromise, so much so that he would nearly hand his wife over to another man because the other man thought she was his sister. This was a half truth. Sarah was Abraham’s half sister. Having been warned by God the man in question would not only back away from Sarah, he would also bless Abraham because of the vision and presence of God that the man had received. Three times Abraham and Sarah were told that they would receive a son. They laughed and they doubted. How could an old couple, well beyond their years of raising children, suddenly be blessed with their own.  Is it not better to use human ways with human wisdom and create heirs that way?

In the days after the birth of Isaac, Abraham would send Ishmael away and he would have other children by another wife after the death of Sarah. but none of them were going to take the place of Isaac and participate in the promise to be a nation which would become the sole possession of the Lord, a holy nation and a royal priesthood before God in the world.

In this we can take comfort: God is still building his nation, calling and drawing in the children of our father Abraham. God is still fulfilling his promises to Abraham and Sarah. From their faithfulness came the family, the nation and the Saviour that will be the One whom we will live with and for in the world that is to come. God through the ages has been faithful to his promises and in that we can rejoice and give thanks as we continue to live it out as our fathers did.