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Genesis 16:3 NLT
‘So Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian servant and gave her to Abram as a wife. (This happened ten years after Abram had settled in the land of Canaan.)’
All of us face decisions throughout life. Some we’re happy with, others, while convinced of their merits at the time, prove a source of regret. Regret is an emotion bemoaning the fact we can’t undo what is done, often at our own instigation. Sarai gives her servant to Abram so they might have children, short circuiting God’s plan. Yet, how can you blame this couple? Ten years in Canaan, their optimism fading, the strange encounters with Yahweh’s promises still fruitless, it was time to give Yahweh a helping hand. The logic is sound, the consequences disastrous.
It’s all well and good looking back on a narrative whose ending we know, but what about when we spend ten years or more cut off from any sense of God’s tangible blessing? I found it tremendously difficult to trust God throughout my 18 years of caring for Katey. I wanted to stay connected to God but positive thinking only got me so far. As for speaking out in faith as a sort of spiritual antidote to the realities of life experience, I’d seen many people die from their “symptoms” while ignoring their diagnosis, preferring in faith a further boldly sung chorus or spoken scripture. For me faith had to be more than ignoring reality in expectation of miraculous deliverance.
So I made a series of decisions, many daft, a lot instant and reactionary. Every time I wanted to throw God off, my thoughts drifted back to my initial encounter with him. I had come from a completely non-religious background so I, together with family and friends, were shocked when I declared my intention to follow Jesus. Yet, that first encounter lodged so deep within that in my angriest, lowest moments, while I told God precisely what I thought of his management of this world, I couldn’t disengage from a holy deposit embedded within me from that first meeting.
QUESTION: What is it about your relationship with God that has felt “undeniable”?
PRAYER: Lord, help me to trust you enough to hold to your promises when answers feel far away.
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