Freedom

Hope
I find myself continually perplexed with the seeming opposition of the two ideas of hope and surrender.  Am I to hope in the promises or am I to surrender my desire to God?  The person that I think of who seemed to go through this very thing was Abraham.  He walked with God, God gave him a promise and a name.  "Abram, your name shall be Abraham for you shall be the father of many nations."

And then Abraham has absolutely ZERO children.  This went on for so long that Sarah got him to get her servant pregnant.  What must they have gone through all of those years waiting for the promise to be fulfilled?  Believing and doubting and believing again.  Did they lay it down for a while?  Did they give up?  They obviously thought that perhaps they were simply mistaken about what God must have meant for them to do in order for the promise to be fulfilled.  Perhaps they really were to do something about it.
But even in the New Testament, Ishmael was referred to as the child of the flesh and Isaac of the Spirit.  So, what was God about with all the waiting?  What was He waiting for?  Why didn't He just give them a child at a normal age and time?  Why did He have to wait until Sarah was 90?  Hardly an age for any mother to bring up a little boy.
Why does God give a promise and get us to hope and then not deliver for years and years and years and years?  What is He about?
And it says that Abraham knew he was a pilgrim, he was looking for a city with foundations, whose builder and maker is God.  And he never saw it in his lifetime.  Although he waited and waited for the promise, he died without seeing it, so that he would not be blessed apart from us.  And others were beaten, tortured, sawn in two, those of whom the world was not worthy.  Do you suppose they wondered where God was and why He tarried?  How did they sustain their hope?

And still, God doesn't owe us anything.  He doesn't have to make promises to mankind.  He doesn't have to give us anything.  Surely He isn't delaying just to watch us squirm.  Sometimes in the excruciating pain of deferred hope I think that it would be better off not to have hoped at all.  Why would He put us through so much pain?  What is the purpose?
I remember Jesus talking about our joy being full.  Like a woman who carries a child, and goes through the pain of childbirth.  He said that when she sees the baby, her joy is fulfilled.  The pain is nothing compared to the gift.  Prayer seems to be one of the only answers in the midst of promises that tarry.  I find that I either dialogue with God about how upset I am and how painful it is, or about how much I want the promise to be fulfilled and ask and ask and ask that He would help me understand the delay.  And then I ask Him to do it already.
Sometimes I wonder if all the asking for Him to fulfill His word is not of faith. Like when a friend tells me he will do something, and then he delays.  If I asked him and asked him and asked him about it, would he not most likely simply call it nagging?  Would he not feel that I had no confidence in his ability to remember or his intention to carry it out?  Does God feel that way about us constantly asking Him to do what He already told us that He would do?
Anyway, what I know and I have to keep coming back to is that my hope is in eternity.  I must set my hope fully on the day that He returns.