Genesis 15:1-6; Hebrews 11:1-3, 8-16
It wasn’t my idea to leave, you remember that don’t you? Dad’s business wasn’t booming, but we were doing well. I didn’t love the work, but it was a good job. Heck, in those times, it was a job. And, if things had continued on as they were, we would have stayed there.
This isn’t to say that you were wrong or to lay any kind of blame at your feet, you understand. I know that this was my choice. I had every opportunity to say no. You certainly didn’t make me leave, and I doubt that you would have even if I’d refused. The choice to pack up and travel so far away was mine (well ours since this affected her as much as me).
But it hasn’t been easy. It hasn’t been easy waiting, I mean. This experience has been beyond my imagination. I’ve seen parts of the world I’d never dreamt of seeing. I’ve even led battles. Not bad for an old man, I must say. Yet, the waiting….
I realize that I don’t have to stay. You won’t keep me here. And over the past few nights, you should know, we’ve been talking about packing up and going back home. I have enough, I think, to buy back the business. If not, I’m still known back there. I can get a job, at least until I’m too old to work. And we can have a house again. I’m growing tired of living like a nomad.
What I need to know is that you haven’t forgotten about us. I don’t think you have, but, I don’t know, some days I have doubts. I wonder if I made some mistake along the way and you got angry enough that you didn’t want to talk to me anymore. Maybe I took a wrong turn and you’re waiting for me to correct that so I can get back on track and things can happen again.
You see, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that I did all this for nothing. I’m afraid that the voice I heard wasn’t actually yours but my own desire for something more in life. This fear inside me has been growing for some time and there are days—too many days—when I’ve begun to think that I’ve made the biggest mistake of my life.
And…what’s that? Yes I see them. There are so many of them out here, far away from the cities. I can barely pick out the familiar patterns among the usually invisible ones. The sky seems filled with them tonight. Look….there, a falling star.
Was that you? If I hadn’t been looking I would never have seen it. It was so faint, even in the darkness. But I couldn’t help feeling, as it burned for that split second, that it was you saying hello.
Maybe it is only me reading too much into it. But, I don’t know, I’ve begun to think…we may stay. What’s waiting just a little longer?
God of the real—seen or not-seen—remind us, from time-to-time, as we wait upon you that you cannot forget us and will not abandon us.