Promises Made; Promises Kept

Louise Maynor

Readings for February 22, 2024: Preparing for the Second Sunday in Lent

Psalm 22; Genesis 15: 1-6, 12-18; Romans 3: 21-31

On that day, the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your descendants, I give this land from the river of Egypt to the great river, the river Euphrates.” Genesis 15:18

            We make scores of promises over time and break the same promises as readily as we made them. Genesis 15: 1-6; 12-18 reveals God making a promise to Abram that remains spiritually, territorially, and politically significant even today. While the promise to Abram is a precursor of the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17: 9-14, it is a sacred, everlasting pact with God. The fulfillment of this promise will involve the making of a people, the Hebrew faith, and the geography of the promised land—the land acknowledgment. How is Abram to believe this prediction?  Faith is the key word. In the Abrahamic covenant, Abraham’s unshakeable faith in God is born when he is an old man. In ensuing years, Abraham will undergo unimaginable challenges as God fulfills His promise to make him the father of generations. 

            The promises we make may not fall into the sacred spaces of our lives as do Abraham’s, but they are sincere, and purpose driven. When I have not kept promises I have made, usually because of my own weakness and misdirection, I have asked God to work things out for me. Too many times, even though I asked, I have had little faith and meager resolve to see the problem through and to wait on God. I have been impatient to know the answer and missed the solution to the problem. Now that I’m older, I hold on to a favorite passage from Teilhard de Chardin:

            Above all, trust in the slow work of God.

            We are quite naturally impatient in everything to reach the end without delay.

            We should like to skip the intermediate stages.

            We are impatient of being on the way to something unknown, something new… .

Abraham trusted God to direct his steps to the altar at which he was to sacrifice his son Isaac.  He believed that God would provide, and God did. Abraham met obstacles that required complete trust and fear of God. As a result of his faithfulness, he is called “a friend of God.”  Imagine that relationship! “All is effective through faith” (Romans 3:21-31). The psalmist knows the rewards of that faith: “All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the Lord. Posterity will serve Him, future generations will be told about the Lord, and proclaim His deliverance to a people yet unborn, saying that He has done it.” (Psalm 22)

            In the New covenant with Christ, we are embraced as the children of God through faith.  It is comforting and soul saving to be wrapped in Christ’s love, and to know that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Promises are kept through faith and faithfulness.