Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son. Genesis 18:14 (NIV)
A Woman Who Failed – The Spirit Series – Part 4
Go to PART 1 | PART 2 | PART 3 | PART 4 | PART 5 | PART 6 | PART 7 | PART 8
Albert Einstein once said, “My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.”
He reveals himself in the details… “Not by might, nor by power, but by [his] spirit…”
It can be hard for us (for me, at least) to find God in our lives because we look for him in the evident and grand. When, more often than not, he’s in the details. His spirit is always here; pulsing, echoing, moving, dancing beneath the surface, hopeful that we will find it through the noise and clamor of life.
In the book of Genesis, we read that Sarah grew tired waiting for the “spirit” of God to show up and make good on his promise that she would have a child. (Genesis 13-18). So, she sent Abraham off to her servant Hagar so that the two of them could have a baby that she could call her own. It was an expensive lesson for her heart and family, not to mention for the son of her servant (who was also the son of her husband), and for her servant Hagar, the child’s mother. Our actions always have a ripple effect on those around us. And being the humans we are, mistakes are inevitable. It’s all a part of it.
It’s the only way we learn to see his spirit.
Like Sarah, I look for God in the miraculous, and of course, he is there. But I have never really witnessed a miracle – not an obvious one anyway. I’ve never seen or known someone to be instantly healed of cancer. I’ve never known or seen anyone walk out of a wheelchair. I’ve never witnessed the hand of God in a sudden, demonstrative and physically morphing way. I do believe it happens, I have just never seen it. Which tells me that he moves in other ways, too. More mysterious ways… We seek the mighty and the powerful in great feats of strength and victory. All the while we miss what the Spirit is doing in the moments; the everyday miracles that happen all around us all the time.
I’m not saying that Sarah’s actions and choices didn’t matter because, ‘hey, at least, she was learning hope and faith and spirit…’
Her choices mattered. They still matter.
But that's not the point of her story. We shouldn’t look at her and say “if she hadn't done that, then we wouldn’t be experiencing this…” The blame game is for people who don’t want to take personal responsibility for the way the world is. Pointing fingers doesn’t build bridges, it just creates more division.
If you look at Sarah and see a woman who failed, a woman who made a mistake, you’d be right. Had she just waited patiently for her miracle, it would have been a cleaner story. For sure.
But if you look a little harder and a little deeper (not for might or for power, but for spirit – Zech 4:6), you’ll see a heartsick woman who desperately wanted to make life work; a woman who tried to make it happen in her own strength out of frustration, despair, and disappointment; a woman who in the midst of her failings and mistakes and irrational decisions, was still moved upon by the Spirit of God.
He was present through it all. He stayed. He stuck in there. He worked with the mess, in the details, through her feeble, frail faith. It’s his specialty.
When I look at Sarah, I see myself. I see you. I see us all.
Go to Part 5 – His Breath In Us »
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