This one is going to be a bit deep (I think) and probably a bit disjointed. This has been rolling around in my head since Friday and I need to get it down, in some form or fashion. Every once in awhile, I feel as though I might have a devotion article in me. I have no idea if this is actually the case or how in the world I would go about actually submitting it to a publication, but here you go.
Friday at the Catalyst conference one of the speakers (I think it was Matt Chandler, but really not sure at this moment) was talking about Abraham and Sarah.
I always feel a little more connected to the women in the Bible who were barren. I read their stories a lot during the dark years of infertility. Hannah was my favorite, but Sarah's story struck a chord with me as well. Sarah was well past the childbearing years. The fact that Abraham was still with her always made me have warm feelings in my heart towards him. In that time, in that culture, not having a direct heir was a BIG deal. But they were still together, long past the time she could have borne him a child.
And then one day Abraham comes home with some news. The Lord has told him some amazing, unbelievable things. He will have descendants as numerous as the stars. Can you imagine how this must have felt to a man who wasn't a father to anyone, despite many years of marriage? He shares this news with Sarah, which I'm sure just twisted the knife further. So what does Sarah do? She starts trying to figure out how God is going to keep this promise. She knows she's barren. She knows she's past childbearing age. There's no way the descendants promised to Abraham would come from her.
And then she did what I so often do. She takes matters into her own hands. Instead of considering the infinite possibilities that are available to an infinite God, she looked around at her finite world and her finite circumstances and tried to help God out a bit. She sent her husband to "be with" (wink wink, nudge nudge) her servant. And lo and behold, a child was conceived. Then Sarah got mad that it worked.
Now I can relate to a part of this. Not the sharing my husband part, but the getting mad part. I remember the time in our journey when Jason was tested. After the results came back that all was well on his end, I realized I really wanted to find out it was his "fault" we couldn't get pregnant. There had to be a little of this on Sarah's part. After all these years, she finally had her proof that it wasn't Abraham's fault they had no baby. And that hurts.
That baby is born, years pass, and yet they still get the word that the descendants Abraham was promised are not going to come from that child, but from one that Sarah would have. When Sarah got that news she laughed. I don't think it was a happy laugh. I think it was the sad laugh of a woman who had long been disappointed in this area. Which in this time was the only job of women. She had watched her friends, her relatives, her servants, everybody have babies. I think it was the kind of laugh that is usually followed by tears. Can you imagine how she must felt? How this must have just twisted that knife again? I have to think that around the time she stopped having periods, there must have been a bitter kind of closure. It was done. Those years of trying were over. This news that she was going to have a baby had to feel a little like "too little, too late." Plus she had tried to solve that problem for God. It hadn't worked. And nothing had changed. In fact, more years had gone by with still no baby. And let's not forget, she was barren. She was 90!
How many times have I laughed at God? How many times have I only looked at my finite circumstances and forgotten that I serve an infinite God? I was the girl who didn't get pregnant. All my blood work showed that I should be getting pregnant, but I wasn't. And you know what I did on that sunny March day as I sat staring at a positive pregnancy test?
I laughed.
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