It's amazing how after one of your best moments, you can turn around and have one of your worst. Abram has just received God's covenant. But, Sarai is barren. And apparently not predisposed to believing God quite as much as Abram. Instead, she gives Hagar to Abram, thinking she could claim the child as her own and through this child the inheritance would come. I know it was a different time, and a different culture, but sharing your husband with someone just seems like a bad idea. What good did it ever do Jacob and Leah and Rachel? Not a whole lot (besides a passel of children). Here, the reprecrussions are still reverberating today. Because from Hagar, Sarai's Egyptian slave and mother of Abram's oldest son, came Ishmael and the Middle Eastern tribes. And Muslims date their lineage to Abram through Ishmael, not Isaac as the Jews. It seems it's a family feud that has never stopped.
One thing I noticed though: God takes care of Hagar. Ishmael, though he is not chosen to carry the covenant, is important to God. His descendants are important to God. When Hagar flees from her mistress's mistreatment, God speaks to her. And He will do it again later. We should never underestimate that. God saw Hagar, as we will see later. He heard her cries and He responded. God showed her His love.
After Ishmael is born, then, God reestablishes His covenant with Abram. Not only confirms it, but seals it with Abram's circumcision and renaming him: Abraham, the father of a multitude. And Isaac's birth is promised. Though Abraham now has a son, Abraham now has a potential heir, God is making it clear that Ishmael was born by the will of man. Abraham's heir will be born by the will of God. Only. Years will pass before this happens, and it proves that it is by God's will and none other, because by all accounts, Sarah and Abraham should never have had children.
This makes me think: sometimes we have to be patient to see God's will. Because God is apparently willing to wait to make it clear that things are happening by His will and no one else's. I wonder how many things I have interfered with, trying to bring them about on my own, and it has interfered with God's work? I cannot stop God's purposes, but I could see how I might delay things because He is willing to wait for His glory and His only. God's timing is perfect, of course. He does things at just the right time, so maybe I have little affect after all. But I see here that I really don't want to be in the way. I don't want to make things work for me and by them make things more difficult for someone else (we shall see later how Sarah's decision here affects Hagar for the rest of her life). Better to be within the will of God and serving Him in His work than being a hindrance or left out altogether.
Tomorrow's Reading: Genesis 18:1-33
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