The Impossible List

"Is anything too hard for the Lord?" Genesis 18:14

The Impossible List
By Rev. William Dohle

If you were to make a list of your personal impossiblities, things you know you could never do, what would be on your list?

Maybe you're older and retired, so "having children" would be deemed impossible right now.

Maybe you're on a set income or own a low income, so "owning a jet" would be deemed impossible.

Maybe your body is built like mine so "lifting a thousand pounds" would be on your list.

We all set up that list, one way or another, inside our head. It's how we keep ourselves from getting killed and trying something too hard for us to do. Its how we manage our own expectations. Without such a list, we might try something truly impossible for us and wind up hurt or dead as a result.

But God has no such list. Not anywhere.

In this passage from Genesis we're reminded of this. Here the angel visitors ask Abraham, "Is anything to hard for the Lord." Their question comes after Sarah, listening in on their conversation, starts laughing when they tell Abraham, "I will surely return to you about this time next year and Sarah your wife will have a son."

Sarah is thinking: "That's crazy! And absurd! I'll never have children at my age. I'm just too old!"

But Sarah doesn't realize who is sitting in her midst. She doesn't know that this God, this Lord of heaven and earth, has no such list. Nothing is too hard for God. Nothing is impossible for God. Even opening the womb of an elderly woman like her.

As we keep our list of impossibilities, we mustn't force our list upon God. For God all things are possible. God can create a new creation here on earth. God can raise Jesus Christ bodily from the dead. God can take the ashes and dust that use to be a human being and give them flesh and muscle and bone and life again. God can do it!

God can move mountains in people's lives. God can change hearts and bring people back to faith. God can heal people physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. God can open our eyes and change our vision. God can do all that.

So... is nothing impossible with God? Do you truly believe that? Or are you like Sarah? Sitting beside herself, chuckling at what she heard. Always keeping reservations to what God is capable of inside? Never really coming to a full expression of her faith?

Let us set aside these things. Let us take the faith of Christ Jesus, believing in our hearts that there is nothing impossible for God and for those who believe in his name. May our eyes be open too, that we might see the answers to our prayers staring us in the face, and that we might know, in our heart of hearts, that our Lord cares for us deeply.

Almighty God, source and ground of all of life, give me the faith to trust you fully, knowing that nothing is impossible with you. May my prayers and petitions be spoken in such faith and give me eyes to see when the answers to those prayers come, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.