Reading 31

Romans 4-7

I love Romans 4. I find myself encouraged by Paul’s comments about Abraham and his faith. The language of promise, grace and faith resonates within me and lifts me up. When Paul describes Abraham believing in “the God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not” I find myself in awe, quietly pondering the description: “God who gives life to the dead and calls into being things that were not!”

Even so Abraham could have chosen to not trust God. The text says that it was “Against all hope” of ever having a child that “Abraham, in hope believed and so became the father of many nations.” I like how Paul says that Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead and that Sarah was beyond her childbearing years.

Faith does not ignore or hide from “the facts”. Faith is just careful to remember the most important fact—God. I suspect that had you told Abraham the fact that he was too old to have a child, he would have agreed with you. Had you expressed the fact that no woman in her 90’s and post-menopausal had given birth before, he would have said “Yes, that’s true.” Perhaps then he would have said that there is one more fact that must be considered, the fact that God had promised him a child.

You see, faith does not hide from the facts. Faith simply helps us to remember the fact above all others: That there is a God and he does not lie.

Nils