God Will Make a Way

A View From the Lower Story

After the great flood, sin raised its ugly head again, beginning with Noah’s son and culminating in the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11). The Tower of Babel was a united attempt of humanity, taking the ingenuity God gave us to build a life without him. This would not end well for humanity, so out of an act of grace, God scattered them and confused their languages. Left alone, humanity will move to greater expressions of evil.

Time for a new plan—one that would actually work this time.

God decided the best way to restore his grand vision of community with us was to establish a nation, a special group of related, like-minded people intent on knowing God as much as he wanted to know them. Through this specially chosen nation, God would reveal himself to everyone and offer a plan that would try to draw people back into a relationship with him.

God chose an old, childless couple to be the parents of this new nation he envisioned. You or I might have picked a young, newlywed couple brimming with health and energy to have lots of kids, but God made a dramatic point by picking Abram, age seventy-five, and his wife, Sarai, age sixty-five. The real kicker is that not only were they past their prime parenting years; they couldn’t even have children due to Sarai’s infertility. The lineage of Abram and Sarai was at its end when they died, at least from a Lower Story perspective. We will see this as a pattern throughout the story: God picks the least likely candidates to accomplish his Upper Story plan.

God invited Abram to leave the comforts of his homeland and go to a place that he would later show him. Start walking guys, I’ll let you know later where you are going. He also promised Abram and Sarai children to make them into a great nation. Not only this, but this new nation would also one day be a blessing to all peoples on earth.

That’s a lot.

The Bible simply says, “So Abram went . . . ” (Genesis 12:4 NIV).

Now, there is one thing I know about most senior citizens, holding in my possession my own AARP card: they don’t like change. (How many senior citizens does it take to change a light bulb? Change? Who said anything about change?) But this older couple—Abram and Sarai—dug down deep, went way beyond their comfort zone, and did what God asked them to do.

A View From the Upper Story

Keep in mind that Abram and Sarai didn’t know Yahweh, as God is often called in the Old Testament. Abram’s dad, Terah, worshipped false gods. Not only that, but Terah was wealthy and provided great security for Abram and Sarai. So, what caused them to pick up and leave it all behind? From a Lower Story perspective, I think it was the promise of a child. Couples who experience infertility know what I am talking about. Or maybe they were just plain tired of living in his parents’ basement and wanted more for their lives. We are not told.

From the Upper Story, God is doing something bigger than just giving them their own digs and a couple of kids. From this new nation would come the solution, the way for all people to come back into the garden to be with God and live forever. It would take 2,086 more years to come to fruition, but “it,” or rather “he,” is coming from this new nation.

The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that somewhere along the way, Abram did capture the Upper Story. “For he [Abram] was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God” (Hebrews 11:10 NIV).

This city is none other than a reference to the New Jerusalem mentioned in Revelation 21:2 where the garden from Genesis reappears in the center of the city. Abram saw it, and it drove his faith to keep moving forward.

A Moment to Reflect

1. Have you ever had a time in your life when you felt God was inviting you to do something that represented a change and was somewhat scary? What did you do? (see Genesis 12:1 and Hebrews 11:8)
2. How did Abram have enough faith to trust God to leave the comforts of his home, but not enough faith to tell the truth about his wife? How do you think Sarai felt? Do you think he was justified in doing this, given the circumstances? (See Genesis 12:10-13)
3. Have you ever been able to get a sense of the bigger thing God was doing in your life before it happened? (see Hebrews 11:8-9, 15-16)