As the years pass Sarai still doesn’t have children.
Meanwhile she had her own ideas. She suggests to Abram to take her maid Hagar
and have children with her. This was a common practice during this time, the
results, hopefully, was to give the man a male heir. Hagar does conceive but it
causes problems. The main problem was it is not God’s plan.
In Genesis 17 God changes their names from Sarai and Abram
to Sarah and Abraham (Gen 17:13, 15-16). Sarah means princess while Abraham
means ”father of many nations”. Changing their names was God’s way of sealing
His promise with them.
We can learn much from Sarah’s life. One of the things that
“jumped” out at me, was the way she handled the “heir” situation. Sarah knew
what God had promised but she had a hard time believing it. Instead of waiting
on God and His time table, she ran ahead of God and made her own plan (the
wrong way). She spoke to Abraham and said, “God is “restraining” me from having
children so go and try with my servant, Hagar. (Gen 16:1-4) Almost immediately,
Sarah realized her wrong and lashed
out at Abraham. (Gen 16:5)
Do we ever lash
out at someone for our mistakes? Is that the right way to handle the
situation? Are our emotions controlling us or are we controlling our emotions?
I can only answer for myself and sad to say many times I let my emotions control me.
The right way is to wait on God and search His word. Waiting
for anything is extremely hard for us, but waiting on the Lord, sometimes, is
almost impossible for impatient humans to do! A few verses that come to mind:
Wait on the LORD:
be of good courage, and he shall strengthen thine heart: wait, I say, on the
LORD. Psalm 27:14
Rest in the LORD,
and wait patiently for him: … Psalm 37:7
Search His word for answers to your problems. As we are
waiting on the Lord for a clear answer to a problem we need to be looking in
His word for the answer. He will give us comfort as we wait for His lead in the
next step.
I wait for the LORD, my soul doth wait, and in
his word do I hope. Psalm 130:5
To know how to wait is the great secret of success. ~ Joseph De Maistre
As the story unfolds we find that Sarah’s faith is
increased. Hebrews 11:11 says, Through faith also Sara herself received
strength to conceive seed, and was delivered of a child when she was past age,
because she judged him faithful who had promised. Sarah is just one of two
women mentioned in the “hall of faith” chapter in the book of Hebrews.
At the age of 90, Sarah had a son, Isaac, meaning laughter.
Abraham was 100 years old. It was certainly a miracle that she had a child at
this age but another phenomenon was her ability to nurse him.
Sarah died when she was 127 years old. She is the only woman
in the Bible whose age at death is recorded.
Faith is to believe, on the word of God, what we do not
see, and its reward is to see and enjoy what we believe. ~ Augustine
As we travel through life we need to wait on Him in all
situations and have faith that nothing is too hard for the Lord.
Donna
