In the midst of God's starry promise to Abraham we miss hearing God also foretelling Abraham about the pain of slavery that is in front of his beloved family and the promise that God will be moving even through that pain. As we continue walking through Lent, we need to hear the reality that promise and pain are always interspersed, and that God is with us in both. Abraham clings to the promise of the starry night and clings to the promise that God will always lead the people.
Then the Lord said to Abram, ‘Know this for certain, that your offspring shall be aliens in a land that is not theirs, and shall be slaves there, and they shall be oppressed for four hundred years; but I will bring judgement on the nation that they serve, and afterwards they shall come out with great possessions. As for yourself, you shall go to your ancestors in peace; you shall be buried in a good old age. And they shall come back here in the fourth generation; for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet complete.’ - Genesis 15.13-16
Image: Gogh, Vincent van, 1853-1890. Starry Night, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55396 [retrieved March 15, 2019]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg.
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