Terra Firma

Monday, February 25^th, Genesis 15 : 5 He took him outside and said, "Look up at the heavens and count the stars—if indeed you can count them." Then he said to him, "So shall your offspring be." 6 Abram believed the LORD, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7 He also said to him, "I am the LORD, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it." 8 But Abram said, "O Sovereign LORD, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?" Sometimes even in the midst of all the promises of God and all the blessings of God in our lives, we still have our doubts.  We all have the capacity to, as the song says, stand on the promises of God with one foot, but we want the other foot firmly planted on what we perceive as terra firma.  With that foot on terra firma, we can feel we have a bit of control and we tend to feel we can trust God more completely in this state where we don’t completely trust God.  We can look back on all the times that God has been with us in our life with that blessed assurance, but we still have doubts while looking ahead.  Our prayer is for God to give us a clear vision of Kingdom, but we close our eyes and sometimes our hearts when we pray.  Keeping the vision of the Kingdom in our sights is what keeps us on the path, but we still want a man-made map in our hands.  Loosing site of the Kingdom while looking at the map is what causes us to veer off the path and into the quicksand of this world.  When we find ourselves sinking into that terra not so firma we know we have once again seemingly wrestled control from God.  It is not true God is reaching for us in the midst of our sinking doubts, but we are still able to think that as long as we are still sinking.