So Abraham, crouched in his tent, thinks of the promises, always those promises: His name would be great, and he would be a blessing, and all nations on earth would be blessed through him.
Trouble is–he does not have a single child, he who has been promised descendants more numerous than the grains of sand on the seashore.
Not one single child!
* * *
And God tells him to step outside his small tent which makes his vision small, and look instead at immensity.
“Count the stars—if you can,” God says, “So shall your descendants be.”
Can God who made these gleaming myriads of stars not make one human child?
Abraham believed God and it was accredited to him as righteousness.
He slept again with Sarah, though she had urged him to sleep with her younger slave Hagar and father children through her.
He had Isaac whose name is laughter.
* * *
What is your impossible dream? The word you heard God say to you, the promise you heard him give you, the dream so long deferred that remembering it has the bitter taste of mockery.
The impossible person?
The impossible project?
The dream you feel you have the talent and ability for, but which lies locked within you, dormant.
Dreams can have a long gestation.
* * *
Step outside. Look at the stars.
Nothing is impossible with God.
Take your dream. Double it. And again.
Dream hard. Pray hard. Work hard.
Then lie down and rest in peace, for you can no more birth an immense dream by yourself, than you can scatter stars through the heavens.
Work restfully, and sleep restfully, leaving your dream in the delicate hands of the one who scatters stars through the heavens for the fun of it.
Because he loves beauty.
And you. And me.
