Daily Lesson for February 1, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter 11 verses 8 through 10:

8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place that he was to receive as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going. 9 By faith he went to live in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God.

Reinhold Niebuhr wrote in "The Irony of American History": "Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore we must be saved by hope. Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith."

We are never really "there". We are always still arriving, still searching, still surveying, still building, still not knowing for certain.  Like Abraham, we live in the Land of God's Promise, but we live there as sojourners and colonists, still looking forward to the building of the city.

Was the promise true?  Yes, though an uncultivated land never seems very promising at first. Was the promise for us? Yes, the promise was for us -- and our descendants; which means no single generation can build it alone.  Was the promise trustworthy?  Yes, though the firmness of its foundation is solely a word which must be taken as an article of faith whose assurance can never be seen but only hoped in.

We are the spiritual descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jakob.  Like them, our homes are makeshift tents with make do improvements.  But, like Abraham, we too look forward to "the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God." And until we live there, we live here.

This is what it means to be a people of the promise.

Artwork:

Pilgrim with staff, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54923 [retrieved February 1, 2016]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Pilgrim_Path_Waymarker_(Ireland).jpg.