Today, we look at a Day 2 text from this year’s summer curriculum, “From Generation to Generation.”
Prayer: Timely God, you never fail to bring your promises to fruition for your people. When we feel uncertain and impatient with your timing, remind us the truth of your steadfast course. May we share your far better way in the long arc of your love and life for this world. This we pray through Christ our forerunner and Lord. Amen. Reading: Hebrews 6:10-20 (Click to read text) Stop and GROW: After reading the text, discuss/ponder the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's Book of Faith questions, which are part of Camp Mount Luther's GROW Time with campers. QUESTION 1: What scares, confuses, challenges, or doesn’t make sense to me in this text? QUESTION 2: What delights me in this text or is my favorite part of the story? QUESTION 3: What stories or memories does this text stir in me? QUESTION 4: What is God up to in this text? Reflection: I think I would prefer evidence and immediate results. As a product of the digital age, having been instilled with the tools required to mine the nearly infinite well of information that’s accessible in the time it takes to type out a query, I tend to prefer hard data on my own timetable. It’s easier to navigate life when I can pull the information, I need in an instant to serve whatever moment is immediately in front of me. I’m accustomed to having results right at my fingertips. And boy howdy, look out if the internet should ever go down or the service become spotty; the cranky turn I take is enough to make a gremlin fed after midnight look like polite table company. Which is maybe why I feel personally indicted, as if the author of Hebrews is taking me to the mat here. Because where I prefer evidence and immediate results, here the author commends a different set of attitudes. In a scriptural tour de force that accompanies this text, the author lifts up a myriad of spiritual ancestors who “by faith” were found to be righteous in God’s sight. Included in that list is Abraham, who now here is doubly commended for the patience he exhibited in life in the wake of God’s irrevocable promise made to him and Sarah.* Faith and patience, it seems, were enough to bring God’s people to the fruition of righteousness. With Jesus as the forerunner on their behalf, they were brought into the promises of God. And maybe this is the reminder we (read: I) need as well. In a time when we are being called upon to summon more faith to trust that things can change and more patience to see them through, maybe we need the reminder of the ancestors who modeled them well on our behalf. With the legacy they leave, with Jesus as the forerunner on our behalf, we can walk with the faith and patience that God gifts to provide for a world different than the one we see. I suppose that is worth the wait. --Justin Lingenfelter * I think it is fair to contend that Abram’s acquiescence to Sarai’s plan for a child via Hagar would be a model of impatience, but I guess we can stand with the author of Hebrews and give him credit for his late-in-life fatherhood.
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