Focal Passage: Genesis 15:1-6; 16:1-6
I am impatient, and, as a result, I am a work in progress. I do not like to watch commercials on TV. I do not like to wait in line at restaurants. I do not like to sit in traffic.
Waiting is an interruption into what I think my schedule ought to be. So, “waiting on the Lord” humbles me. I grow so impatient, just “waiting.” I think I am not alone.
Part of my love of Scripture, especially the Old Testament, is the portrayal of our spiritual heroes with no coverup. Abram, soon to be Abraham, was portrayed as a man of great faith, first, answering God’s call to go to a new land with an unknown future, and second, demonstrating his humility with Lot in allowing Lot to choose the prime choice of land.
Yet, while waiting for the covenant God made with Abram to be fulfilled, Scripture does not whitewash the temptation that faced Abram and Sarai to provide an heir a different way than God prescribed, and their acting on this temptation because of his impatience with God’s call and plan.
Abram and Sarai had waited ten years for God’s covenant to be fulfilled. Both questioned God’s timing and even God’s very character in whether God could fulfill such a covenant.
When God first announced His covenant with Abram, Abram and Sarai were childless and old. Now, it was ten years later. When tempted, they sought their own answer. They could act on a common custom, a surrogate slave.
A son could be born and would take on the family name. It was a way of circumventing God’s plan and providing Abram a son/heir for God’s covenant to be fulfilled.
Abram and Sarai could wait no longer and acted on their own plan. Using Hagar, an enslaved Egyptian, as the surrogate, she delivered to Abram and Sarai a healthy, beautiful baby boy.
Now Abram and Sarai had the heir to God’s plan. They created a plan and then acted on that plan. Except, it was not God’s plan.
Immediately, problems arose. Hagar no longer wanted to be a slave and believed that since she was carrying the heir to God’s covenant, she would be moved up in the family structure. Sarai, the recipient of Hagar’s belief in a new order and her verbal abuse, now blamed Abram for her sufferings.
Sarai — who, along with Abram, devised a workaround plan from God’s plan — was so angry that she called out to God to be an arbiter and judge Abram for her sufferings.
Sarai, armed with the renewed commitment from her husband that Hagar, though the surrogate for their child, was only a slave, returned the abuse to Hagar so much that Hagar felt forced to leave the family compound. Their impatience to wait for God’s timing and plan created so much anguish.
Waiting upon God seems hard. Like Abram and Sarai, we want to take matters into our own hands and find answers.
God’s call to us is to be patient, trust in God’s ability to provide in all matters, and wait for God to act because when He does, all will know of the mighty acts of God. B&R