After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, “Do not be afraid, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “You have given me no offspring, and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.” 4 But the word of the Lord came to him, “This man shall not be your heir; no one but your very own issue shall be your heir.” 5 He brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” 6 And he believed the Lord; and the Lord reckoned it to him as righteousness.

We give thanks for the Word of God in Scripture, the Word of God among us, and the Word of God within us! I have read this story of God’s promise to Abram (later called Abraham) many times. Always, the way I’ve approached this story—and like many other readers have—is by looking primarily at God’s promise and Abram’s response of faith. After all, that’s how the Apostle Paul interprets the story in Gal 3:6-9. He writes:

“Just as Abraham “believed God, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness,” 7 so, you see, those who believe are the descendants of Abraham. 8 And the scripture, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, declared the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, “All the Gentiles shall be blessed in you.” 9 For this reason, those who believe are blessed with Abraham who believed.”

This equating righteousness with faith is how Paul justifies the inclusion of Gentiles as Gentiles in the church. After all, Abram was considered righteous without being previously circumcised, so what prevents other Gentiles from trusting God and being part of Abraham’s legacy? So, this is how I tend to read the story. But, while Paul offers a perfectly good interpretation, this Genesis text is rich with meaning in its own context and as its own story. We do this passage justice when we set aside—just for a moment!—other well-worn conclusions in order to hear and see meaning we haven’t previously.

This time, as I walked through the passage, a few things caught my attention that I hadn’t noticed before. The first thing I noticed was how this is the third time that God promises Abram land and a family legacy, and this time the dynamic between Abram and God is very different from those previous encounters.

The first time God makes Abram this promise, in Genesis 12, Abram is in his home country. Upon receiving the promise, Abram goes off to follow the Lord’s direction to travel to an unknown destination.

The second time God promises Abram a home and children is in Gen 13. God shows Abram the land, promises it to him and his descendants, and tells him to walk through and survey the land. Abram’s offspring will be as numerous as the grains of sand that he walks on as he explores the land God promised him. Once again, Abram faithfully does what God instructs.

This third time, in Gen 15, God once again promises Abram a great reward for his faithfulness. But before God can reiterate the promise of children and home, Abram has had enough and answers God back! Abram points out that God has NOT given him children, and he and his wife remain childless.

Let’s don’t judge Abram harshly. I don’t think he is in the wrong. Abram has consistently obeyed God each time that God issued a promise, while God has not yet delivered. In a relationship of trust, both parties are allowed expectations for promises to be kept. So, I don’t think that what we are looking at is Abram being unfaithful to God, but rather, he understandably requires some reassurance of God’s trustworthiness.

Now, here’s the other thing about this story that stunned me that I’d never paid attention to before: in v. 5, God’s reply to Abram includes God taking Abram outside. None of the other promise stories have this feature: God bringing Abram from inside to outside.

Let’s think for a moment about what the “inside” is. Abram sees abundance, but that abundance which he has procured for himself: carpets and cushions, clothes and coffeepots. Within these tent walls, Abram sees the fullness but also the limit of what he can provide for himself and his family.

Conversely, inside the tent, Abram also sees what he lacks. He sees his barren wife and her empty arms. He hears a silence instead of children’s cries and laughter. He sees what he cannot secure for himself and his family.

But God takes Abram outside. It’s bigger outside. The sky is literally the limit of what can be seen and experienced. Outside, Abram can see farther, breathe deeper, and move freer. And it’s outside of his dwelling that Abram receives the reassurance that God’s word is as good as done. God tells Abram to count the stars if he can. The number of stars fails to compare with the many ways that God will bless Abram.

As part of creation, the stars serve as a reminder that a God who can fashion stars and hang them in the sky can certainly open the womb of a barren woman. A God who takes a silent void and makes it an earth full of birdsong can certainly turn the silence of Abram’s tent into laughter. Quite literally! If you read ahead, you know that Abram and Sarai will have a son and then name him “laughter.”

But Abram’s hope had to be renewed for his trust in God to continue until that day that was still quite a ways off in the future. And God’s way of offering such hope was to bring Abram outside. There, Abram got a bigger perspective of what’s possible. He saw more opportunities to hope for and dream of.

If we read through the rest of Scripture, we find that God is consistently in this habit of bringing people outside. The Hebrew slaves while in Egyptian bondage couldn’t see past their captivity. But God brought them out. It was outside of the walls of slavery that had encompassed them that they could begin to imagine a community and a future filled with dignity and abundance.

In the New Testament, we see the church, the ekklesia—literally “the called out.” Inside the “called out” community, we see that there was plenty of room, enough for everyone: Jews and Gentiles, men and women, slaves and free. It’s bigger outside, not just with more room but more images and senses that seem to proclaim: “there is so much more to dream of and hope for than you could possibly imagine inside your walls!”

In Acts 2, when the apostles receive the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, they immediately went outside! They had to go outside. Outside is where the spirit’s gifts could take full flight, where people from all over the world could hear that God had raised a crucified one from the dead. In that small upper room, the apostles could not have imagined the thousands of people that would hear and trust this news that day.

And so, God’s people must cultivate this ability to imagine, as it is part of the prophetic DNA. We are called to this prophetic work: to point to God’s presence, to bear witness to the love of God, and to present the world with an alternative to the hate, violence, and sorrow it has made for itself. But this task of imagining—like Abram and Sarai conceiving in old age—is impossible if we only look for possibilities within the confines of our own small realm of existence.

The late Old Testament theologian and dare-I-say prophet Walter Brueggemann writes in his book The Prophetic Imagination: “The prophet does not ask if the vision can be implemented, for questions of implementation are of no consequence until the vision can be imagined. The imagination must come before the implementation. Our culture is competent to implement almost anything and to imagine almost nothing.”

Human societies and power systems continually create war, poverty, slavery, and division mostly because that’s what has always been demonstrated. For example, it’s not hard to imagine war—we have plenty of references and images. There are countless films that depict it, histories that describe it, businesses that will profit from it, and people who will glorify it. And because it’s not necessary to imagine or dream it up, war is always a possibility.

Now, not all sermons have such an easy application, but I think the first step to applying the wisdom of this text to our lives is to take it literally: go outside! Like Abram, inside we tend to fixate on the world we human beings have created: on the internet, on the tv, in the news. And there are plenty of limitations to what we as humans have made that is good, not to mention the destruction we have created. But step outside. You see more of the world God made, the world God called good. It’s bigger outside. And every child knows: outside is where you go to play!

In their study on the role of the outdoors in human health, authors Twohig-Bennet and Jones cite several established health benefits of going outside: improved physical health, social interaction, and mental clarity. We tend to relax more and not take ourselves too seriously. We play games and laugh louder. Activities that are frowned upon inside are perfectly acceptable outside. When my now teenagers were babies, we experienced what we called “the witching hour.” It’s that magical time of day when a completely satisfied baby becomes a tiny storm. Although dry and fed and held, the baby will not stop fussing. That is, until you step outside with them. As soon as the screen door would closed behind me, and the baby would hear her voice in the much larger outdoor world, and she was arrested mid-fuss. She would look around at the enormity of outside, completely distracted by the abrupt and dramatic change in scope.

Just like Abram, being outside totally human creation reorients our perspective toward things that inspire and refresh our thinking. A God that dreamed up an oak tree and made it so can imagine possibilities for our lives and solutions to our problems that we never thought possible. Creation is good news itself. We would be wise to let it speak to us, teach us, because it has a lot to say. Psalm 19 sings this song:

1 The heavens are telling the glory of God;
and the firmament proclaims his handiwork.
2 Day to day pours forth speech,
and night to night declares knowledge.
3 There is no speech, nor are there words;
their voice is not heard;
4 yet their voice goes out through all the earth,
and their words to the end of the world.

Here in this song of worship, we hear that the heavens tell us how wonderful God is and how capable God is to do anything. We hear stars sings praise in a language that while it does not translate, it does communicate. Maybe it was this song Abram heard that night, outside his tent. That star song did not tell him how or when God would do this miraculous, impossible thing. But he grew more confident in knowing the why and the whom. The picture of the night sky offered him immense beauty; it increased his imagination. It allowed him to hope.

The second step of application is to take going “outside” more metaphorically. Go outside your walls. What are the camps, the stances, the viewpoints that provide structure to your thoughts and interactions? They are not necessarily wrong or bad, but they do have limitations. And when they are all you draw from, they can keep your hopes small.

And yes…sometimes our camps and stances and viewpoints are just plain wrong! Within our walls, it’s easier to harbor prejudice, to rely on stereotypes, and to think of the other as enemy. Inside the tents of our camps, it’s tempting to inflate the possible risks of going out, of being vulnerable and exposed. It’s easier to remain exclusive and keep others out, even if it means keeping out the wisdom and blessing and fun others may have to offer. While this inside approach might sound safe, it doesn’t sound like life. And it most certainly doesn’t sound like faith, faith as trust in the God who made the outside and all the others in it. And this kind of trust where we follow God outside, we are told in this passage, is the righteousness that God values.

So, go outside and play! Don’t take yourself too seriously. Enjoy the righteous, faithful work of going outside, wondering and dreaming and imagining all the possible and impossible ways God’s love might come to us and through us.