Impossible.

Can’t.

Out of the question.

Won’t work.

Has God ever placed a task in front of you, and your response was more “fight and flight” than obedience? I have all kinds of excuses (reasons, I tell myself). I can’t. I haven’t. I don’t. I’ll fail. I’ll fall. It would take a miracle. It’s just impossible.

Then I remember the impossible bumble bees. Didn’t a scientist “prove” that their wings don’t have enough lift for the size of their body and the weight of the pollen they carry? The calculations said they shouldn’t be able to fly.

Except bumble bees do fly.

That scientist hadn’t taken into account the mechanics of the movement of the bees’ wings. They move more like helicopter than airplanes. They fly!

The impossible is possible. Sometimes we get the explanation of how this comes to be, as we do with the bumble bee, and sometimes we rest in the belief that we will understand someday.

I remember Abraham and God’s impossible promise to him, and how Abraham’s faith led him to believe that God was able to do what He’d promised: to give him a son who would become a nation.

Against all hope, Abraham in hope believed and so became the father of many nations, just as it had been said to him, “So shall your offspring be.”

Without weakening in his faith, he faced the fact that his body was as good as dead—since he was about a hundred years old—and that Sarah’s womb was also dead.

Yet he did not waver through unbelief regarding the promise of God, but was strengthened in his faith and gave glory to God,  being fully persuaded that God had power to do what he had promised.   Romans 4:18-21   NIV

I pray for that kind of faith. When God calls, I want to say, “Here I am,” the way Samuel did. I want to look for ways to carry out God’s plan instead of looking for excuses that it can’t be done. I want to be “fully persuaded” as Abraham was, so that when he was asked to give up his son, he believed that God could do the impossible.

I found a poem I’d written many years ago, called “Abraham,” and thought it fit today’s theme.

*

I peer over the edge of the precipice

at grazing sheep, insect-like below,

wondering if I dare

take the first step and walk

on the breath of the warm winds that brush my face.

Or will I plummet, arms flailing, cursing my foolishness?

*

All the plans, the God-breathed promises

for the future of my children

and my children’s children . . .

Did I imagine Your voice?

Was it just a dream, a nighttime fog

that evaporates in the scorching sunlight of reason?

*

Questions plague me like gnats,

doubts like biting flies.

What kind of God do I serve,

to ask this foolish sacrifice,

to bid me to take a fateful step in faith?

*

But You were good yesterday.

You are good today,

and I believe You will be good in all my tomorrows.

So I will take the step

and, upheld by the very air of Your breath,

I will fly.

*

My prayer for us all:

that we answer “Here I am” when God calls and that we learn to “fly” in faith.

• photos by Barb Briggs
• thanks to E. Wright for the inspiration and reminder of the verses in Romans                https://asonebeingtaught.wordpress.com/2015/09/16/gods-choice-and-ordinary-people/