Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter 11 verses 8 and 9:
8 By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. 9By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise.
I love this Scripture.
How many of us, like Abraham, know not where it is exactly that we are going? We’ve heard a call, we’ve said yes to a summons, we rose up and followed, but where it is that this path of life is taking us, we really have no idea. Sometimes we’re absolutely terrified by the uncertainty and insecurity of it all. Where will I be in six months, or six years? Will it all work out? Will I still have a place?
And sometimes we are there in the place, but like Abraham, reside in it, but as a foreigner — as someone temporary, or unsettled, or altogether tenuous. We inhabit where we are like Dreamers residing in the United States — here today, but without a sense of settled peace about tomorrow. We all live in a place like that in some kind of way. The place is called the present, which never tells us the future.
Then this:
“Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” These are the words the writer of Hebrews used to frame the whole matter. It’s as if he’s saying, “Look, these are the terms. You must accept this. You cannot live your life with any visible guarantee beyond this. You are going to have to take God at God’s word.”
And the word we have for all this unknown, uncertain, sometimes tenuous and temporary status is called life. And what we’re supposed to do is live it. We’re supposed to live this life of faith one uncertain day at a time until finally one day we shall finally come into our own promised land.
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