If you read the 'appetizer' post just before this, you know that we spent a night over the weekend camping with awesome friends. Hobo dinners, s'mores and pudgie pies abound. And on Sunday morning, we were at RVC-Savage at 8:30am to prepare for sharing a little about our Journey to Swaziland.
Pastor Rob's message began with this scripture:
"And He brought him outside [his tent into the starlight] and said, Look now toward the heavens and count the stars -- if you are able to number them." -Genesis 15:5 (Amplified)
I love this -- from Mark Batterson:
"Let me set the scene. Abraham and Sarah are childless. Their deepest desire is to have children, but Sarah is barren and for decades they lived with the pain and in that culture, the shame. I think we tend to forget the human element in this story. Every time one of Sarah's friends got pregnant, every time she heard a child laughing, or maybe when she got that invitation to a baby shower, I think she felt that familiar pain in the pit of her soul, and it didn't get easier, it got harder. I think she and Abraham must have cried together. I bet they had a few fights together. They felt the ache of emptiness and the confusion of helplessness, because what they wanted most, they cold not have. But one day, God makes a promise. He says, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed you can count them. So shall your offspring be." But it is not just what God says. It is what God does. If you look at this passage very carefully, it says that He took Abraham outside. Now, I think it is easy to read a passage like this, to read right past it, but let me preach between the lines, if you will. Abraham was holed up in his tent. In a sense, he had this man-made ceiling, an 8-foot ceiling. When God decided to take him on a little field trip, He took him outside that manufactured environment and He told him to look up into the night sky and to count the stars. Now I have no idea how long that took. It must have been an all-nighter. I have no idea how many times Abraham lost count. But by the time he was done, I think God had taught him an object lesson he would never forget. See, Abraham would never look into the night sky the same way again, because those stars in the sky were a nightly reminder of the promise that God had given to him."
It's easy to get a little holed up in our tent on this journey. We know we're at Point A, and Point B is our departure for Swaziland, but we have no idea how we're going to get there and how all of these little details are going to play out. We have a house to sell and support to raise -- in a terrible economy. We've seen incredible blessing, amazing favor... but it's still very easy to gaze through the holes in our tent instead of stepping outside and gazing at limitless opportunities -- His promises for us.
The amazing thing is that, when I start to doubt, start to worry, confirmations seem to overflow, especially when I get to the end of 'me'. During the garage sale I got a call from a family. They're committing to monthly support in a HUGE way, but the call came just an hour after I was wondering if our support-raising had plateaued or was at a standstill. And, in the last few days we've seen countless other blessings in support. My tent is so ridiculously tiny.
We Princes are huge Switchfoot fans, and I can't help but hear the chorus of 'Stars' when I think about this point in Abraham's life, and this point in ours:
"When I look at the stars... when I look at the stars... I see someone else. When I look at the stars... the stars... I feel like myself."
I can only imagine how gorgeous the stars in the sky will be from Swaziland.