Abraham faced the fact that his body was as good as dead, it gave him no reason for hope however the dust and stars spoke a different story.

The promise of fathering many nations was continually before him, the dust swirling around him in the day, kicked up as his feet trod the land promised to him, the stars, uncountable, shining brightly at night as beacons of hope, for this was the amount of descendents God told him he would have.

Day after day, night after night the dust and stars engaged Abrahams imagination, he did not hide his thought life, he laughed in unbelief but did not stay there, he actively interacted with God by asking questions, growing in faith, becoming fully convinced that God had the power to do what He had promised.

The journey of faith, intimacy with God, is developed in the context of an ongoing dialogue.

Our thoughts, the unspoken questions, dreams and desires of our hearts are not silent in Gods ears, He is present there. Abrahams relationship with God grew and developed into a friendship where God chose to share His plans with Abraham and Abraham in turn was able to influence those plans.

There is a momentum to all that happens in the Kingdom.  I love how God delights to add layer upon layer to what He has already shown us, discovering more about His infinite nature, growing in limitless intimacy and greater levels of faith engaging our imaginations with the dust and stars that represent the limitless yes of the promises over our lives, where against all hope in hope we chose to believe.

Hope is a person, He fills us with all joy and peace as we trust in him so that we overflow with outrageously glorious hope to the world around us. Hope is the confident expectation of good, the absolute conviction that God who is outrageously gloriously good will do what he has promised.

We are called to disciple nations, to look at the swirling dust, to peer at the uncountable stars, to keep the conversation going, to not stop, to not give up.

To trust, hope and persevere so that relationship leads to partnership and earth looks like Heaven ….. where ever our feet take us on adventures in faith as friends of God.