It will only happen after you've died.

What on earth is the good of that to me? No, Abram never said that. But did you? As you read about God’s promise to Abraham that he would be the father of nations and kings, did you wonder what use that promise was to Abraham? He would be dead and gone before the birth of his grandchildren, perhaps he never knew about the birth of Isaac's twins and certainly he did not see his twelve great grandchildren who were to become the twelve tribes. What use is a promise about what will happen on this earth if you are dead and gone before it happens?

If it had been you to whom the promise was made, would you have wondered what earthly use was a promise of a future you would not see? The question is important because in a way it is to you that the promise is made. Spiritually or physically you are part of the story and some of the innumerable descendants of Abram are coming through you. Would you have been grateful for a promise that something wonderful would happen after you were dead? Was I? No, I wasn’t, I rushed past the question and concentrated on grasping every opportunity to do good or receive good while I live. Just live the religious life to the full was my thinking.

I guess King Hezekiah was one person who wondered what the use of God’s promise to Abraham was. In King Hezekiah’s lifetime a prophet told him that after he died the nation he had ruled would be defeated in battle, his descendants would be made captive and terrible things would happen to them. His only response was that at least there would be peace in his lifetime.

There is a tendency to concentrate so strongly on the heavenly aspect of our relationship with God that we loose the earthly. All who believe God’s Word have a future in heaven, but what about this earth, these people who are coming and will come? Because we will never see them does it mean that we are to live as though the earth ends when we die? Perhaps it’s a pity that we ignore the earthly because of the spiritual. Maybe there is a great joy in knowing that the goodness of God will reach our descendents long after we are gone. Maybe the anticipation of that is sufficient to give us a new future when we lack the strength to build our own.

It is true that Abraham did not see his twelve great grandchildren. But he saw something else; Jesus said, “Your Father Abraham saw my day and rejoiced.” Perhaps one answer to the puzzle is that we should make less of a hard line between our spiritual future and the earthly future, maybe we should blur the division a little. Blessings flow from God into this earth and into this time, and we are part of the now but also part of the future. Maybe anticipation of the goodness and mercy of God is sufficient reason to give us a future we can see and rejoice about.