Promises you can count on: God goes with you

Let's catch up on the promises: 

In last week's reading, God promised Noah that whenever God saw the rain-bow in the sky, God would remember how much God loves humans and all of creation and not destroy it with a flood again.  I think of a parent looking a the mess the teenager just made and remembering how cute he or she was as a toddler so while the parent might punish the teen, the parent doesn’t give up on the teen.

God doesn’t give up on us either.  God remembers us.

This Sunday we hear what is usually described as God’s call to Abraham.  Except Abraham is not Abraham yet, he is Abram – God changes his name later in the story.  And this is the first of three times God makes a promise to Abraham ( See Genesis 15:1-15 and 17).  Ok, the second and third promises are really restatements of the first:

 I will make of you a great nation and will bless you. I will make your name respected, and you will be a blessing.

 I will bless those who bless you,
    those who curse you I will curse;
        all the families of the earth
            will be blessed because of you.” (Genesis 12:2-3, CEB)

You see, while God always fulfills God's promises, it's not always on our time table.  And this promise takes a looooong time to fill.

A very long time:

             - Abraham is 100 and Sarah is 90 when Isaac is born

             - It takes basically 25 years for Abraham to get to the land God promises.

Abraham never sees the promise completely fulfilled.

Yet Abraham stakes his life and that of his family on God's promise and moves out, going to a land God will show them.  He doesn't even know where they are going, or how long it will take!

This promise God makes is one of the Big Five - the covenants with Noah, with Moses and Hebrew-slaves-turned-free, with David, and the new covenant Jeremiah proclaims.  So it's a really big deal.  

But I'm thinking about the promise under the promises.  The unspoken promise that Abram relies on when he tells Sarai (Sarah's name gets changed later too) to pack up everything to move to a place God will show them.  

The promise of God's presence.

I think that Abraham trusted that God would be with him, every step of the way.  And even though the fulfillment of the grand promise was slow in coming, Abram/Abraham knew that he was never alone.

God was with him.  

That promise is for you and me too.  God never leaves us.  

God goes with us.

Even when we have no idea where we are going.