In the church calendar, we are in the season after Pentecost.

From now until December, the Sundays aren’t anything special. After the fasts and feasts, after Advent, Christmastide, Epiphany, after Lent and Holy Week and Eastertide, we are in ordinary time, Sundays known by their numbers, or by their weeks after Pentecost.

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God.

It takes us twenty or thirty minutes to read the whole life of Abram.

To go from your invitation for him to move to grandchildren.
From your promise to family gathered as his funeral.

It takes us a few minutes to read,
and summarize into a couple principles,
and stories we tell and think about how we might have done better.

It took Abram 175 years.

Paul tells us stories about how his faith in your promise is what counted to you.

Not his great military exploits, not his remarkable publishing career,
not his perfect, day to day, constantly wise actions.

Your promise, his basic and growing belief in that promise.

We worry weekly, or daily, or hourly, that we are wandering from you.
We struggle with what you must think of us when we ask you questions.
We waste years fretting about wasting years.

Perhaps Abram did, too.

But you loved him always.
You reminded him with some regularity of your promise to him.

(Though I think the reminders were years or decades apart.)

But you didn’t lose track.

As we start into ordinary time, weeks marked by their number,
not their story,
I ask today that you will remind us today that you are with us.

Not the promise to Abram of being a great nation.

No, the promise that no matter what,
you, Jesus, are with us to the end of time.
and beyond.

Amen.

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Reflection on Genesis 12:1-9, Romans 4:13-23, and Matthew 28