Count the Stars If You Can

Abram had wandered the land God showed him for years now. He had sheep, servants, silver, and gold, and not one child to leave them to.

One night God spoke to him in a vision. "Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield. Your reward will be very great."

Abram did not feel rewarded. "Lord GOD, what can you give me?" he said. "I still have no children. When I die, my servant Eliezer will get everything I own."

"That man will not be your heir," said the LORD. "A son of your very own will be."

Then God brought Abram outside the tent. The sky was crowded with stars, bright ones and faint ones and pale smudges of light behind them.

"Look up," God said. "Count the stars, if you can. That is how many your children will be."

Abram was old, and Sarai had never been able to have a baby. But Abram believed the LORD. Because Abram trusted him, God counted Abram as right with him. Abram could not count the stars, but God counted his trust.

"I am the LORD," God said, "who brought you out of Ur to give you this land."

"Lord GOD," said Abram, "how can I know it will be mine?"

So God told him to bring a young cow, a goat, a ram, a dove, and a young pigeon. Abram killed the animals, cut the big ones in half, and laid the halves in two rows with a path between them. (In those days, two people making their most serious promise walked down a path like that together. It meant, "If I break my word, let me end up like these animals.")

Then vultures swooped down onto the meat. "Shoo! Get off!" Until sunset, an old man ran up and down the rows flapping his arms at birds.

As the sun went down, a deep sleep fell on Abram, and a thick, frightening darkness came over him. In the dark, God told him what was coming. "Your family will be slaves in a land that is not theirs for four hundred years. Then I will punish that nation, and they will come out with great riches and return here. You will die in peace, a very old man."

In the full dark, a smoking firepot and a blazing torch appeared and moved down the path between the pieces. That was God, walking the path alone while Abram slept. He was taking the whole promise on himself: if it ever broke, the cost would fall on him.

"To your children I give this land," said the LORD.

Nothing was paid that night. The animals in two rows and the torch in the dark were only a picture of what a broken promise would cost, and Abram's family had not broken any promises yet. They would.

Everything God said came true. The family became slaves in Egypt, and God brought them out. They broke faith with God again and again, and God kept his word every time.

Long after, one new star rose over Abram's land, and wise men followed it to a baby from Abram's family. When he grew up, he walked alone into the dark to carry the cost of every broken promise. At noon the sky went black, and he died on a cross. On the third day he was alive again.

Everyone who trusts Jesus the way Abram trusted God is counted into Abram's family, too many to count, like the stars.