Count the Stars If You Can

Abram was old now. His beard had gone gray, and the waiting had worn him thin.

Long before, God had made him a promise. It was the same promise that had pulled him out of Haran with no map and no address, only a voice he trusted. God had said: Abram, you will have a son. And from that son, a family. And from that family, more children than anyone could ever count.

But the years went by. And no son came.

Have you ever waited for something so long that it started to hurt? You wait, and you hope, and you wait some more, until the waiting feels like a stone sitting heavy in your chest. That is how it felt for Abram. He was beginning to wonder if the promise had gotten lost somewhere. If maybe God had forgotten him.

So one night, God came to him.

Do not be afraid, God said. Come outside with me.

And God took him out under the dark, dark sky. The kind of sky with no city lights, where the stars are spilled across the black like sugar across a table. Thousands of them. More than thousands.

Look up, God said. Go on. Count the stars, if you can.

Abram tried. One, two, three. But you cannot count the stars. There are too many. They go on and on, past where your eyes can reach, deeper than seeing, all the way out into forever.

And God said, gently, That is how big your family will be. Every one of them loved. Every one of them mine.

Abram stood there with his head tipped back, and something inside him let go. The son had still not come, and yet Abram believed God anyway. He believed because he heard the love in God's voice, and he knew, somehow, that God meant to keep every single word.

Then God did something strange and beautiful.

In those days, when two people made a solemn promise, they would lay out the halves of an offering in two rows, and then both of them would walk between the pieces together. It was a way of saying: if I break this promise, let it cost me everything.

God told Abram to set out the pieces. And Abram did. And then the sun went down, and a deep, heavy sleep came over him.

Abram never walked between the pieces. He could not. He was fast asleep.

Instead, in the dark, a burning torch and a smoking firepot moved between the pieces all alone. That was God. Only God. Passing through by himself.

God was saying: I will keep this promise. And if it ever breaks, I will pay the full cost myself.

Abram could not have known how far God would go to keep his word. He could not have seen, far off in the deep of that starry sky, a hill, and a cross, and God himself walking alone through the dark, carrying the price of every promise he had ever made.

But while Abram slept beneath all those uncountable stars, the One who would keep every promise was already on his way.