A Sky Full of Answers

by Rev Greg Obong-Oshotse 16 October 2020

Text: Genesis 15:5 “And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

I once knew a little boy who loved airplanes. Each time one flew overhead he was beside himself with joy as he looked out to see the miraculous man-made bird thundering its way through the skies. Then he would turn adoringly to his doting dad. ‘Will you buy me an aeroplane when I grow up?’ he would ask. ‘Yes, I will’, his dad would answer for the umpteenth time. Decades passed, the plane unbought and forgotten, and his dad passed away. As he wept, he remembered that his dad had not bought him the airplane after all and wept the more, pained that he would never get his airplane. Then a tiny voice spoke up in his head: ‘But he did. He gave you a good education, which gave you a good job that has taken you on many airplanes to different parts of the world.’ Then it dawned. And he wept the more. Now because he had not been able to say ‘Thank you!’

In such similar ways, the Lord answers our prayers daily. We may not recognise the answers because they often come in a different form to what we expect. Abraham was promised children as many as the stars of heaven. Yet he never bore enough children to farm 10 acres of land. He believed God’s promise without ever seeing them. In the birth of Isaac, the first step was taken. It was proof enough that others will follow until he had a sky full of children.