Adult Bible Study September 16, 2007

Lesson Text: Genesis 15:1-6; 18:1-15; 21:1-8
By Melanie Zuercher
E-mail: mz606@cox.net

“Is anything too hard for the Lord?” Genesis 18:14a TNIV.

This week’s lesson deals with God’s promises (made to Abraham and Sarah) and how God keeps promises even when God’s people sometimes fail to believe.

We’ve just passed the second anniversary of the worst natural disaster in United States history, when Hurricane Katrina ravaged the country’s Gulf Coast, particularly Mississippi and Louisiana. One recurring theme in news accounts remembering this August 29, 2005, event and its aftermath (part of which was a second hurricane, Rita, that wreaked havoc on Texas’ Gulf Coast less than a month later on September 24) is that of broken promises.

One example is The Road Home program, federally funded but run by the states involved, intended to provide people whose houses were destroyed in the hurricane with funds to build new ones. So far, only a small fraction of the more than 100,000 applicants have received any money, in large part due to bureaucratic red tape. An internet search of “Katrina two years later” will produce other stories of those who believe they have been promised help, to return and rebuild, that hasn’t materialized.

Juxtaposing a story of God’s promise with that of a human promise can invite speculation on an individual’s faith, but that isn’t the point. The story of Abraham and Sarah and the promise fulfilled in Isaac is one of numerous reminders in Scripture that God does keep promises but that we humans are constantly falling into the hole of limiting or circumscribing just how (and when) those promises may be kept.

It may remind us, as well, that as God’s people striving to be faithful, we have a responsibility not only to keep our own promises but also to extend our hands to other members of God’s family caught in situations too large to solve alone—both to offer help and to reaffirm that nothing is “too hard for the Lord.”