Waiting Out Of Control

Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, “As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, and you shall be a father of many nations.”

Genesis 17:3–4

We learn from reading about Abraham that hope is necessary because often waiting is uncontrollable. Did you know God didn’t tell him how long he would have to wait? He just said, “Here’s the hope. You just wait.”

God’s promise to Abraham was not to be fulfilled for many years. And in some respects that promise was not totally fulfilled even in his lifetime. You and I are the fulfillment of that promise. According to Galatians, we are the children of Abraham. We are the result of God having blessed Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; having blessed the nation of Israel; and then, through Israel, having blessed all of us. We are blessed because of Abraham. But Abraham never saw all of that. He saw enough, but he had to wait.

Hope is the ingredient that keeps us going between the promise and the fulfillment. Hope is the thing that gets us up in the morning when we know that God cares but we haven’t seen any evidence of it in the last few days. Hope drives us onward when we want to stop and quit. Hope keeps our dreams alive while we are waiting. And we need hope because we can’t always control the timetable.