1After these events, the LORD’s word came to Abram in a vision, “Don’t be afraid, Abram. I am your protector. Your reward will be very great.”
2 But Abram said, “LORD God, what can you possibly give me, since I still have no children? The head of my household is Eliezer, a man from Damascus.” 3 He continued, “Since you haven’t given me any children, the head of my household will be my heir.”
4 The LORD’s word came immediately to him, “This man will not be your heir. Your heir will definitely be your very own biological child.” 5 Then he brought Abram outside and said, “Look up at the sky and count the stars if you think you can count them.” He continued, “This is how many children you will have.” 6 Abram trusted the LORD, and the LORD recognized Abram’s high moral character.
Genesis 15:1-6 (CEB)
It used to fascinate me that there were people who had memorized Pi out to so many digits. If you are reading this and are not familiar with Pi, here is Pi listed out to 1000 decimal places:
3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510
58209749445923078164062862089986280348253421170679
82148086513282306647093844609550582231725359408128
48111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196
44288109756659334461284756482337867831652712019091
45648566923460348610454326648213393607260249141273
72458700660631558817488152092096282925409171536436
78925903600113305305488204665213841469519415116094
33057270365759591953092186117381932611793105118548
07446237996274956735188575272489122793818301194912
98336733624406566430860213949463952247371907021798
60943702770539217176293176752384674818467669405132
00056812714526356082778577134275778960917363717872
14684409012249534301465495853710507922796892589235
42019956112129021960864034418159813629774771309960
51870721134999999837297804995105973173281609631859
50244594553469083026425223082533446850352619311881
71010003137838752886587533208381420617177669147303
59825349042875546873115956286388235378759375195778
18577805321712268066130019278766111959092164201989
That’s a lot! If you search further on the internet, you can find Pi written out even further. Here is a link to Pi out to 100,000 digits: http://www.geom.uiuc.edu/~huberty/math5337/groupe/digits.html Take a moment to click on this link and see if you can count the digits yourself. Then come back here.
Were you able to do it? Even though that expression of Pi stops after “only” 100,000 places, you probably were not able to count them all. I tried, but stopped after only a few digits. For me, it was the enormity of the task before me, and the sense that trying to count all of those digits just didn’t make any sense, nor did it serve any useful purpose as far as I could see.
In Genesis 15, God hears Abram’s concern about not having an heir. Abram decides that he is going to simply leave everything to Eliezer, the head of his household. God, however, has other ideas for Abram and Sarai.
So, to make a point, God instructs Abram to go outside and try to count the number of stars in the sky, if he thinks he can do it. The thing about the stars as they appear to us from earth is that they seem to keep appearing out of nowhere as our eyes acclimate to the darkness. It’s just like Pi: just when you think you have made progress, you are reminded that Pi is a non-terminating number. In other words, the digits of Pi go on forever. No one can ever possibly hope to count them all simply because there is no “all”. From our vantage point, there is no “all” with regard to the stars in the heavens, and with God, there is also no “all”.
God is infinite by nature and eternally existent.
God has no beginning and no end. Nor will God ever have an end. It is impossible to count the years, ages or eons of God because God exists outside of our concept of time. We express this concept of the nature of God in short by saying that God is eternal. It is also well worth reminding ourselves that God is also infinite, which is another way of saying that God has no end. We can no more measure the totality of God’s being than we can count all the digits of Pi, no more than we can count all the stars in the heavens. Our God is not an awesome God just because of how God loves us. Our God is an awesome God simply because God is.
God’s creative involvement in our finite human existence is incapable of being measured or counted and needs no qualification.
In some ways, Abram was misunderstanding God’s nature by proclaiming his decision to leave everything to his head of household Eliezer. Abram only decided to do this because he believed it was impossible for him to ever conceive a child with his wife Sarai based on Abram’s advanced age (which is capable of being counted and measured) and the physical condition of Sarai (which is also capable of being observed, quantified, and documented) with regard to the possibility of pregnancy. Abram’s limited understanding of the world and of the nature of God made it virtually impossible for Abram to see past the physical limitations of his own finite human nature to imagine anything being possible beyond what his own experience could confirm and support.
God, however, is. Thus, God is not limited to the same constraints we humans are. God’s vision of what is possible is unlimited. God’s creative power is limitless. As the great preacher Rev. S.M. Lockridge once said in a famous sermon about the nature of the Christ, “No far-seeing telescope can bring into visibility the coastline of his shoreless supply.” That’s because there is no coastline. There is no limit to God’s love for God’s creation, of which we are an integral part, made in the very image of God.
Abram and Sarai did end up having a child. In Genesis 17, God would tell Abram, “I am El Shaddai,” and give them both new names: Abraham and Sarah, and Sarah would go on to give birth to Issac. In Exodus, God would say to Moses, “I AM who I AM. So say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you,'” (Exodus 3:14) and Moses would go on to lead God’s people out of Egyptian bondage. In the Gospel narrative, Jesus would tell his disciples, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6:35) and again in John 9, “While I am in the world, I am the light of the world,” and then he used the dirt of the earth and the spit of his own mouth to make mud and gave sight to a blind man.
Go outside tonight. Bring what is bothering you along. Look up at the night sky, find a star, and start counting. Count until the stars become blurry from tears of joy and you just stop counting. Be reminded of the eternal, infinite, limitless nature of God and God’s love for you, a love that cannot be counted but can always be counted on, and that come death or hell or high water, God always has been, is now, and always will be, the great I AM.
First United Methodist Church 