Into My Hands



Genesis 16:1-16
1Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar.
2And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the Lord has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai.
3So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife.
4And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress.
5And Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my servant to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!”
6But Abram said to Sarai, “Behold, your servant is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she fled from her.
7The angel of the Lord found her by a spring of water in the wilderness, the spring on the way to Shur.
8And he said, “Hagar, servant of Sarai, where have you come from and where are you going?” She said, “I am fleeing from my mistress Sarai.”
9The angel of the Lord said to her, “Return to your mistress and submit to her.”
10The angel of the Lord also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.”
11And the angel of the Lord said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the Lord has listened to your affliction.
12He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.”
13So she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, “You are a God of seeing,” for she said, “Truly here I have seen him who looks after me.”
14Therefore the well was called Beer-lahai-roi; it lies between Kadesh and Bered.
15And Hagar bore Abram a son, and Abram called the name of his son, whom Hagar bore, Ishmael.
16Abram was eighty-six years old when Hagar bore Ishmael to Abram.

It was exactly 20 summers ago that I took a very serious situation into my own hands. I had a white “thing” (turned out to be cancer) on the side of my tongue that had been created by a rough molar. It didn’t hurt (usually) and I wasn’t terribly concerned about it. But it didn’t look right so I started trying different things to make it go away. The first thing I tried was putting vitamin E directly onto it. That didn’t work. Long story short, nothing I tried made it go away. My dentist finally told me I could go and get it taken care of or I could die. If I had continued utilizing my own resources to fix my problem, you wouldn’t be reading this blog today, as I wouldn’t be here to write it.

Today’s reading gives us an absolutely perfect example of what life looks like when we try to handle our own problems. Sarai knows of the promise of God to Abram that he would father a great nation. And yet she is old and well past child bearing age. So, she sets about the task of solving her problem. She gives her maid, Hagar, to Abram in order to create a child. Sarai makes the first mistake and Abram makes the second. He could have / should have said, “No. We will trust in God fulfill His promise.” But instead, he sees a willing young woman and goes for it. The result of that decision is the child Ishmael. Ishmael, as a descendent of Abram also falls under the promise of a great nation and becomes the father of what is today known as the Muslim world. In the Koran, Ishmael is seen as the fulfillment of God’s promise to Abram, with Mohammad tracing the line of promise back to him. As we stand this very day on the brink of yet another war in the Middle East (with Syria) we can see the prophecy about Ishmael being fulfilled yet again.

The application here is obvious. When we take God’s plan and run ahead of Him, we are acting foolishly indeed. And yet we do it all the time. The “it’s okay God, I’ve got this” attitude will land us in a world of pain every time. Sarai thought she was solving a problem when in reality she was creating a bigger one. We don’t have the luxury of God’s future knowledge. We don’t have the power and resources of God. The one thing we can most certainly possess is a trust that He has everything firmly under control and we can trust that implicitly.

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