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New Testament Reading - Living in faith

¹What is faith? It is the confident assurance that something we want is going to happen. It is the certainty that what we hope for is waiting for us, even though we cannot see it up ahead. ²Men of God in days of old were famous for their faith.

³By faith — by believing God—we know that the world and the stars — in fact, all things—were made at God’s command; and that they were all made from things that can’t be seen.^a

⁸Abraham trusted God, and when God told him to leave home and go far away to another land that he promised to give him, Abraham obeyed. Away he went, not even knowing where he was going. ⁹And even when he reached God’s promised land, he lived in tents like a mere visitor as did Isaac and Jacob, to whom God gave the same promise. ¹⁰Abraham did this because he was confidently waiting for God to bring him to that strong heavenly city whose designer and builder is God.

¹¹Sarah, too, had faith, and because of this she was able to become a mother in spite of her old age, for she realized that God, who gave her his promise, would certainly do what he said. ¹²And so a whole nation came from Abraham, who was too old to have even one child — a nation with so many millions of people that, like the stars of the sky and the sand on the ocean shores, there is no way to count them.

¹³These men of faith I have mentioned died without ever receiving all that God had promised them; but they saw it all awaiting them on ahead and were glad, for they agreed that this earth was not their real home but that they were just strangers visiting down here. ¹⁴And quite obviously when they talked like that, they were looking forward to their real home in heaven.

¹⁵If they had wanted to, they could have gone back to the good things of this world. ¹⁶But they didn’t want to. They were living for heaven. And now God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has made a heavenly city for them.

1. Perhaps the reference is to atoms, electrons, etc.