Impossibly small beginnings

Abram arrived in Canaan, and he was one man accompanied by his wife, his nephew and what we would call his household staff. He had probably lived in houses before, but now he lived in tents. He may have been a merchant in the past but now he is just a cattle breeder. From that one man was going to come two nations, both innumerable, plus all the spiritual descendants who were not Jews by birth but born of God by the will of God. You would have thought, wouldn’t you, that if God intended to do something that big, then he would at least have started with a group of people.

There’s a story that one man and his companions came to England to bring the good news of Jesus. They disembarked at Glastonbury in Somerset, and began the steep climb up the cliff. They rested on the way, at a place called Weary-all Hill. From the spot where they are believed to have rested you can see the land stretching far out into the distance. What an impossible task, just a few people trying to bring the good news to a whole country. But Christianity flourished in England, reviving again and again after successive invasions by people with no knowledge of God. Every town in Britain has a church and several Christian meeting houses and chapels.

We, the older Christians, have reason to be optimistic about our lives. The results of God’s blessing on Abraham were effective long after Abraham died. We do not know what consequences have come from acts of kindness or self sacrifice done because we believed God called us to do so.

Abraham was only one person when I called him, says God through the prophet Isaiah, but when I blessed him, he became a great nation.” Then Isaiah adds, “The Lord will bless Israel again, and make her deserts blossom” What you and I have to consider is not how to try and make Christianity powerful and popular, the only thing we have to ask ourselves is are we believing the promises of God and are we living faithfully so that God may bless us, and our descendants after us, and their descendants also. We have much to think about and a lot of people born and unborn to pray about.