18 In hope [Abraham] believed against hope, that he should become the father of many nations, as he had been told, “So shall your offspring be.” 19 He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead (since he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. 20 No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, 21 fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised.
Romans 4:18–21.
5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness.
Genesis 15:5-6
Through the Bible: Romans 4–7
As I’ve gotten older, I’ve been forced to admit my eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I am officially “take a picture of the cooking instructions on the label so I can blow them up to read them” years old.
Maybe that’s why I started thinking about God telling Abraham to “count the stars—if you can” during our reading of Romans 4 today.
Way back in Genesis 15, God took Abram outside, lifted his chin up to the night sky and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them… so shall your offspring be” (Gen. 15:5).
What strikes me is how old Abraham was when God said this. His eyesight wasn’t improving. His body wasn’t getting stronger. His natural ability to hope wasn’t getting sharper. If anything, everything in him was winding down—eyes, stamina, expectations, all of it.
And yet it was in that season of his life that God pointed him toward something he could not possibly count.
And here’s the part that gets me: Abraham couldn’t even see that many stars to begin with.
We tend to romanticize the ancient desert sky as clear and overflowing with light. And sometimes it was. But Abraham lived in a world of shifting sands and swirling dust storms and smoke from cooking fires. Not every night was a glorious canopy. Some nights the heavens were clouded over. Some nights were hazy. Some nights the moon washed the weaker stars away.
And even on the best night of his life, Abraham’s aging eyes could only make out a few thousand pinpricks of light. That’s it. That’s all the human eye can see under perfect conditions.
God was calling Abraham to count what he could not see.
Centuries later, the astronomer Galileo turned his telescope to the heavens. He realized the Milky Way wasn’t a white streak at all—it was a river of countless stars. Tens of thousands, maybe more. He couldn’t number them either.
In our own lifetime, the Hubble telescope showed us our galaxy is just one among billions. Now the James Webb telescope hints at even more galaxies hiding in every direction we look.
Every time we improve our vision, the universe grows larger. Every time we think we’ve finally reached the edge, the edge moves.
We are no closer today to counting the stars than Abraham was that night with his head tilted back and his cataracts glowing in the starlight.
And maybe that’s the point.
In Romans 4, Paul says Abraham “hoped against hope.” He believed God’s promise not because he could see it clearly, but because God could see it clearly. Abraham wasn’t asked to measure the sky—only to trust the One who made it.
And that’s where this lands for me today: God still asks His children to count promises they cannot yet see. To trust His word over their eyesight. To believe in the future He sees even when our vision blurs with age, disappointment, or dust storms.
Maybe faith is learning to say, “Lord, I can’t see all You see—but You see all I need.”
Maybe faith is accepting that the promises of God are always bigger than our ability to measure them.
And maybe faith is looking up with tired eyes at a sky we can’t begin to number and whispering:
“So shall it be—because You have said so.”
Related Content
- Day 342: Is Romans 7 “BC” or “AD”? (Romans 7:24-25)
- Sermon: Justification by Faith: Two Examples (Romans 4:1-16)
- Sermon: The Why of Easter (Romans 5:1-11)
- Sermon: Stupid Monsters (Romans 6:1-11)
- Sermon: Gotta Serve Somebody (Romans 6:15-23)
- Sermon: What About Baptism (Romans 6:1-11)
- Sermon: The Jekyll and Hyde Syndrome (Romans 7:15-8:4)
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