Have you ever walked across a suspension footbridge? If you have, you remember the feeling of the bridge moving under your feet. If you haven’t, let me help you experience this in your mind.
A suspension bridge is made with ropes or cables that usually span a deep ravine. Often, there is a river or stream running through the bottom of the ravine. If you’re lucky, the bridge has ropes or cables on the sides that you can grab onto. Usually the surface that you walk on is made of boards. As you walk across the bridge, it sways. A lot. Each time you take a step, your weight causes the bridge to shift under you.
I don’t particularly like heights. So the few times I have walked across a suspension footbridge, I made it across by looking straight ahead—never down to see how far I might plunge if I slipped or if the bridge gave way. And people on the bridge with me who purposely jump on the bridge to make it rockier do not amuse me.
In the pathway of life, we often find that our path leads us across suspension footbridges. The path we find ourselves traveling often feels like anything but solid ground.
Sometimes, in addition, we’re blindfolded. So even when we get back onto solid ground, there are trees to run into and holes to fall into and rocks to trip over.
What I am describing is a metaphor for the uncertainties that all of us face as we go through life, even when we are walking by faith. Even if we put our faith and trust in God, we still find that there are places along the way where the path will feel as unsteady as a suspension footbridge, and we will feel as if we are stumbling blindly into trees and potholes. If the path was smooth and we always knew where we were going, we wouldn’t need faith, would we?
In my oblivious youth, I assumed that these difficult pathways were the plight of youth, but that some day I would gracefully retire to a rocking chair where I would peacefully and contentedly rock, reading the Psalms and knitting lovely afghans until the Lord called me home.
I have come to realize that the pathway does not generally smooth out for us as we age. Rather, we still find ourselves navigating suspension footbridges and rocky paths, but with the added difficulty of bodies that no longer behave as they ought to. So we start to take a step, and discover that our feet don’t move as they used to. Parts of our bodies that we had not even noticed stop functioning properly. Our senses, if we still have them, are greatly diminished. Not to mention our minds, which fail us more often than we want to admit.
Regardless of where we are on the pathway of faith, God is with us. As the Psalmist says, “He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber.” (Psalm 121:3)
Last Sunday, we talked about Noah. Noah was over five hundred years old when God asked him to start building the
I do want to give you one warning. The Bible does not hide the ugly parts of its stories. The superheroes of the Bible all have faults. Noah got drunk. Abram was very foolish, and compromised his wife in a way that is hard to believe.
God came to Abram again when he was ninety-nine years old. I love God’s belief in late bloomers. If you think God is done with you just because you’re getting up there in years, think again.
Back when Abram was seventy-five, God came to him and called him to leave his country and follow God, and he told Abram that he would be the father of a great nation. Only problem was, as the years went by, Abram’s wife, Sarai was barren. It’s hard to be the father of a great nation when you have no children. So Sarai got the bright idea that maybe Abram should sleep with her maid, Hagar, so that Abram might produce an heir. When he was eighty-six years old, Abraham’s son, Ishmael was born to Hagar.
As we read this text, keep in mind that Abram is not some perfect, sinless person who always does the right thing. He’s a real person who has made some rather impressive mistakes. But when God appears to him, he listens and he obeys. And now, twenty-four years after God first called Abram and asked him to leave his home so that he might become the father of a new nation, God comes to him again. Abram has not traveled a smooth path all these twenty-four years, but nevertheless God has not given up on him.
My text is Genesis 17:
1 When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him and said, "I am God Almighty; walk before me and be blameless. 2 I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers."
3 Abram fell facedown, and God said to him, 4 "As for me, this is my covenant with you: You will be the father of many nations. 5 No longer will you be called Abram; your name will be Abraham, for I have made you a father of many nations. 6 I will make you very fruitful; I will make nations of you, and kings will come from you. 7 I will establish my covenant as an everlasting covenant between me and you and your descendants after you for the generations to come, to be your God and the God of your descendants after you. 8 The whole
9 Then God said to Abraham, "As for you, you must keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you for the generations to come. 10 This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you, the covenant you are to keep: Every male among you shall be circumcised. 11 You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you….
15 God also said to Abraham, "As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. 16 I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her."
Abraham’s pathway towards being the father of a nation certainly was not a smooth one. God clearly called him. But then God let him wonder for twenty-four years what had happened to that call. I don’t know whether or not Abraham knew what a suspension footbridge was, but certainly he must have felt like he was walking on one, at least some of the time.
Abraham had to learn the lesson of walking in faith. It didn’t come naturally to him, and it doesn’t come naturally to most of us. Like Abraham, we make mistakes along the way. But God does not give up on us.
From the first time God told Abraham that he would be the father of a great nation until Abraham’s wife, Sarah, gave birth to their son, Isaac, was twenty-five years. It’s not too surprising that halfway through that time of waiting, Sarah gave up and sent her maid, Hagar to Abraham, thinking that at least through Hagar he would have an heir. And it’s not too surprising that when the Lord told Abraham, age ninety-nine that his wife Sarah, age ninety, would finally bear a son, they laughed.
Abraham had been given a promise, but somewhere along the way on that very long suspension bridge he was traveling, he lost faith in God’s promise. He stopped believing that God had told him he would have a son. And who could blame him?
But in the end, Isaac was born, and Abraham’s faith was reborn.
The New Testament scripture we read earlier in the service from Hebrews 11, that great chapter on faith, was written about two thousand years after the death of Abraham. It holds up these examples of faith, Noah and Abraham and many others.
I really like the first verse in Hebrews 11: “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” It’s an interesting definition of faith. Specialists in logic might have some problems with it, but that’s exactly the point. If faith were entirely based on logic, it would not be faith.
The only way it can be true that “faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see” is if we are putting our trust in God and we are absolutely convinced that God is faithful. Otherwise, having faith in what we are hoping for and what we do not see isn’t really possible. There has to be a faithful God behind the promise that we believe, or our faith has no substance.
Abraham believed that God would keep his promise. If you read the whole story, and I recommend it, you will see that Abraham did not always have perfect faith, and he got himself into some difficulties because of his lack of faith. But in the end, Abraham did trust in God, and Abraham did become the father of the nation of
The fact that Abraham was not perfect in his faith gives hope to the rest of us, because often our faith is weak and imperfect. God’s covenant with Abraham was based on God’s faithfulness, not on Abraham’s. It’s a relief to know that God’s promises to us are based on God’s faithfulness, not ours.
Our faith does not have to be great and it does not have to be mature in order for us to decide to believe in God. We begin with whatever small amount of faith that we have. As we continue in the experience of walking with God, our faith grows stronger. Even though life still might feel about as certain as a wobbly suspension bridge, we know who is really in charge. We know because as we walk with God, we experience his faithfulness to us. So when the bridge feels really wobbly and the wind picks up and we look down into the deep ravine beneath us, we can remember that God has been faithful to us in the past, and we know that God will always be with us.
The guarantee of God’s presence is not a guarantee of wealth or health or happiness or even safety. If you were hoping it was, I am sorry to disappoint you. People who put their trust in God have died in poverty; they have endured pain and disease and disability; they have met with great sorrow; they been hurt, both physically and emotionally.
The promise that God gives to us is nothing less than himself. Everything in life can be taken from us; everything can go wrong—but God cannot be taken from us.
Jesus died for us so that we might be forgiven and purified so that we might know God. That is the great gift of our salvation in Jesus Christ. To know God. To know God’s presence with us in this life and to know that we will be with God for all eternity in heaven.
That is the wonderful gift he offers us. It’s true that when we walk with God our lives seem to go a lot better. That’s because if you put God in first place in your life, everything else is in perspective.
Take our current financial situation, for example. Now that’s a wobbly suspension bridge walk, isn’t it? It doesn’t matter what side you’re on—whether you have seen your life savings and investments slashed so that you wonder if you will outlive your assets or you were poor to start with but now you wonder if you will be able to eat and have a roof over your head—or you’re somewhere in between—we’re all on this wobbly suspension bridge together.
If you trust in God, your financial situation will not automatically be solved. But if you trust in God, you will know in your heart that no matter what happens, God will be there with you.
We don’t talk a whole lot about heaven. I think one reason is that most of us have it pretty good here on earth. I know I do. So why would I want to die and go to heaven?
Maybe if our lives get a bit more difficult, we will find ourselves longing for heaven a little more often. I have come to believe that the aches and pains that plague most of us as we age are a gift from God. These physical aches and pains help to wean us from our love of our earthly bodies and earthly comforts, so that we will begin to long for heaven, where we will be with our Lord and God.
Wherever you are on this journey of life—whether jogging easily down a smooth path or wobbling across a suspension bridge—God promises to be there. God is with you.
Our closing song is “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.” If you have never made that decision, to follow Jesus, do it today. You will never regret it.
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