Helping God | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: Helping God | Previous Challenge Entry
By Sarah Soule
02/06/06
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Have you ever wanted something so badly it made you sick? Most of us have. Unfortunately for us, we tend live perpetually to want what we don’t have. Believe me, I know from experience.

I also know what lengths we’ll go to in order to quench whichever inner thirst has taken over our hearts and minds and left us obsessed. That’s the tricky thing about being a Christian, we’re supposed to sit and wait for a God we can’t see to meet all of our needs. I was thinking about this the other day and stumbled on an old story.

Enter Sarai, also called Sarah, whose name I share. (And after reading this story I realize that’s not all we share.) She was a woman who knew what she wanted. More than anything she wanted a family to call her own. And so here she was, a woman whose husband had been promised children that outnumbered the stars, barren. Totally unable to have a child. So what is a woman in her position to do? She’d give God a little help. This is what she said, and it’s recorded in scripture. Aren’t you glad what you say isn’t recorded in a holy document to be handed down for millennia? “The LORD has kept me from having children . . . perhaps I can build a family through [Hagar].” Genesis 16:2 (NIV)

Did you notice that since God had not yet fulfilled his promise, Sarah decided to fulfill it for him? What a fabulous idea! And the story goes that she pleads with her husband to procreate by way of her servant Hagar. Abram, probably very ready to be finished with Sarah’s complaints, complies. (Does this sound like another story with disastrous consequences? Hint: Garden of Eden.) Hagar conceives. So they live happily ever after, right?

But then something happens that Sarah didn’t account for: Hagar gets an attitude. I know, it’s shocking that maybe Sarah didn’t exactly know what she was doing, but now there’s tension in the house. Hagar glides around gloating about her growing belly. So what does our heroine do now? Confess to God that she mucked it up and ask for his help? Not quite. She goes to her husband, who I can just picture sitting there watching ESPN(or the 2000 BC equivalent), and says “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.” Genesis 16:5 (NIV) Isn’t it interesting that Abraham is now catching the flack for going along with Sarah’s plan? And Abram, who at this point is trying to catch the score in the game says, “Your servant is in your hands, do with her whatever you think best.” Genesis 16:6 (NIV) So Sarah decides to fight fire with fire and retaliate.

Hagar runs away to the desert, encounters God (which is another story altogether) and comes back with her attitude adjusted. Hagar’s son, Ismael, is born. Years pass. Scripture does not ever record how God dealt with Sarah’s sin of taking matters into her own hands. What it does record is God’s great mercy to not hold Sarah’s sin against her. Thirteen years after her attempt to fulfill God’s promise, he does something so incredibly magical, he tells Sarah that she will, in fact, finally be a mother. What does our good friend Sarah do now? She bows at his feet and thanks him, right? No, actually, she laughs. She laughs at God. But, sure enough, God is merciful again and her elderly belly begins to expand. Finally, Sarah acknowledges her error, and names her baby Isaac, which means “He laughs.” The story doesn’t end here, though. After Isaac is born, Sarah can no longer deal with Hagar and Ismael, and they are sent away. Ismael’s descendants are today’s Palestinians, and Isaac’s children are today’s Jews. Talk about sibling rivalry. Sarah’s desire to control her situation has led to more than two millennia of conflict between people groups.

Is it really worth it to take what we want at all costs? Surely my one little sin won’t engender a civil war. Maybe not, but what I know is that God is faithful to fulfill his promises, and he doesn’t need any help from a woman named Sarah, in this century or any other.

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