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For the promise that he would inherit the world did not come to Abraham or to his descendants through the law but through the righteousness of faith… For this reason it depends on faith, in order that the promise may rest on grace and be guaranteed to all his descendants… (vv. 13, 16a)

We live by faith! Faith, as the author of Hebrews says, is “The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.”

Faith is the confident belief that the one who made us can be trusted, ultimately, eternally, whatever happens, whatever suffering or tragedy may come.  

My father used to tell how he began helping his dad in the fields down in the panhandle of Texas when he was ten years old. Dad said Grandpa started him out with a team of red mules, Kate and Jewel, they were called: “Oh, they were a pretty team, a soft, sandy red, the color of the Texas sky at sunset. And how they could pull; some said there wasn’t a better team anywhere in the country.

Once in a while Grandpa would drive the red mules when he went into town. Dad said, “It was comical to see those old girls going down the road, their heads bobbing up and down, and their long, pointed ears flapping against their necks. That was their motion, a kind of natural rhythm that helped to propel them along.”

One day when Grandpa was on his way home from town with the mules, a sandstorm blew up suddenly, as they often did in that part of Texas. The dirt and dust were so thick he couldn’t see his hands in front of his face. Grandpa simply dropped the reins and said, “Take me home, girls.” They had to go more than five miles, down the main highway, onto a side road, and around several bends, but those old mules knew where they were going, and they brought him home.”

How many times in your life have you had to drop the reins because you couldn’t see the road ahead?

How many times have you faced overwhelming circumstances that gave you no options in any direction?

How many of us have endured intolerable physical pain or debilitating mental anguish that rendered us powerless?

How many of us have watched as the casket of one of our nearest and dearest was lowered into the grave and felt a grief so painful we could hardly breathe?

We were among a large group of friends gathered for the burial of a dear friend recently, and watching as the pallbearers carried his casket from hearse to the grave. His little ten year old granddaughter began to weep profusely. Her grandmother put her arms around her and held her. We all wept with her.

Faith?

It is elusive sometimes. How many of us have prayed, “O God, I can’t go on — and have gone on anyway? Faith!

Faith is not only a belief, faith is an action. It allows us; indeed it compels us to go forth like Abraham in response to an urgent call, an inner nudging “not knowing where we are going,” only knowing that the one who made us, the one who is urging us on, will make a way.”

In 1977, about ten years before she died, I asked my grandmother, Nellie, then in her early eighties, if she would allow me to tape record some of her family stories. Grandma had plenty to tell. She told me about her grandmother, my great-great-grandmother, Catherine Isbell, who with her three oldest sons claimed 640 acres of Black Jack woods in the Oklahoma land rush of 1889: 160 acres each, as the Homestead Act allowed.

They immediately set about clearing some of the timber so they could plant crops, and they began to build a house. It was a combination dugout, like the sod houses they were accustomed to in Kansas, and logs, which had been a rarity in the prairie country from which they had come. In a few years there was a general store, which also served as the post office, a church, and eventually a school. Catherine was the moving force behind all of the building -- especially the church. She insisted that there be a place for the children to attend worship and Sunday school.

Catherine never missed an opportunity to witness to her faith: to tell how God had blessed her throughout her life. All of her extra money was sent to missions. When Catherine visited her grandchildren, she always held what she called "family worship." She would gather everyone around her and tell stories from the Bible, and then, as Grandma tells it, "We would all join in singing the old gospel hymns that were her favorites." Grandma said, "My folks were not much for going to church, but when Grandma Catherine came, she took my oldest brother Elmer and me to church every Sunday. Pa let us drive the horse and the spring wagon to church by ourselves after Grandma Catherine had gone home. One Sunday, the wagon got stuck in the mud as we were crossing the creek. That was the end of going to church for a while, but Elmer and I never forgot." Elmer later became a Baptist preacher.

There were not many doctors in that part of the country in those days, so Catherine became the community midwife. She helped to deliver over 100 babies in her time. She always prayed during the deliveries and the Lord always answered her prayers. Catherine was very proud of the fact that she never lost a mother or a baby.

Catherine got pneumonia at the age of 83. The way Grandma told it, she was out making garden on a cold day when she shouldn't have been. It had rained the night before, and she crawled around on the damp ground and took sick. She was unconscious by the time her daughter Liza and grandson Elmer arrived from Texoma. They called the doctor, and when he arrived he gave her a shot in the arm, which revived her.
When she came to, she was angry. She raised her head up, looked around at everyone and said, "Ohhh, I was almost in heaven! I could see across the river; I could see over there, and it was beautiful. And then the devil came along and poked his spear in my arm, and here I am back in the world!"

When Grandma finished, I knew something about myself that I hadn't known before. I knew where my faith came from. Faith is handed down from one generation to another — and it grows and matures as we face the inevitable hardships and sorrows that come into every life.