I know the plans I have for you, says the LORD, plans for your welfare and not for harm, to give you a future with hope.  Jeremiah 29:11

I wish I could change parts of my past. Some acts I would not do again. Others that were left undone, I would do. However, time moves forward without mercy. The stories of our lives offer no pauses and no rewinds. Each scene sets the stage for the next.  If we knew only the scene in Abraham’s life recounted in the Genesis reading above, we might think this was a man with nothing in his life he would edit. But the Abraham we see in this passage is a person who had been shaped by adversity, doubts, and even failures, as well as great acts of faith. Chapters 12-22 in the book of Genesis make this clear. Everything in Abraham’s past brought him to Chapter 22’s account of faithfulness and blessing. He lived, as we all do, in the unrepeatable present and trusted God who alone owns the future. Thus Abraham becomes for us a living example that “all things work together for good for those who love God” (Rom. 8:28).  Each of us is moving toward many possible futures. All of these possibilities have one thing in common for people of Abraham’s faith: God who awaits us in the future encompasses all of them. God goes before us just as before Abraham. 

God, help us to live in the present in ways that will bring us where you want us to be in the future. Amen.