Years ago, researchers asked people to look at a series of photographs and identify what had changed from one picture to the next. In one experiment, nearly everything remained the same, except for one significant detail. A large building disappeared from the scene. Surprisingly, many people never noticed. The researchers called this “change blindness.” When our attention is fixed on one part of the picture, we can miss something important happening elsewhere.
I think the opposite can also be true. When something painful changes in our lives, it can become the only thing we see. The diagnosis, the empty chair, the financial pressure, the strained relationship or the prayer that still has not been answered can fill the entire frame. We become so focused on what has gone wrong that we struggle to see where God may still be at work.
This summer at First United Methodist Church, we built a sermon series around the Missouri State Fair theme, “Show Me Stars and Stripes.” We left the stripes to the fair and turned our attention toward the stars.
Thousands of years ago, God led Abraham outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” (Genesis 15:5) God promised Abraham that his descendants would be just as numerous. There was only one problem: Abraham and Sarah had no children, and they were far beyond the age when such a promise appeared possible. God’s promise did not match their circumstances.
That may be why the story still speaks so powerfully. Most of us know what it is like to stand between what God has promised and what life presently looks like. We believe God is good, yet something in our lives is not good. We trust that God hears us, yet heaven seems quiet. We believe God has a future for us, but we cannot see the path from here to there. Abraham’s story reminds us that the strength of a promise is not found in the person receiving it. The strength of the promise is found in the One who made it.
That does not mean every hope we have is automatically a promise from God. Faith is not a way to pressure God into giving us the outcome we want. Scripture does not promise that faithful people will avoid grief, disappointment or hardship. In fact, Hebrews 11 describes faithful people who died without seeing everything they had been promised fulfilled in their lifetimes. Faith does not always receive a quick answer. Sometimes faith continues walking while the answer remains far away.
The promises of God are deeper than an easy life. God promises to be present with us, to offer wisdom when we ask, to work within us, to forgive us, to bring purpose from suffering and to hold us with a love that nothing can separate us from. Through Jesus Christ, God promises that suffering and death will not have the final word.
When life does not look promising, we may need to do what Abraham did: step outside the limits of what we can presently see and look up. The stars did not tell Abraham when the promise would be fulfilled or how it would happen. The stars reminded Abraham that God could see a future he could not yet see.
Your present circumstances may be painful, but they are not the whole picture. The chapter you are living today is not necessarily the conclusion of your story. So, when the night feels especially dark, look again. Sometimes darkness is not evidence that God has abandoned us. Sometimes it is the very place where the promises of God become easier to see.
