We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. Hebrews 6:19 (NIV)

Sarah and Her Dream Child – Part 3

Go to PART 1  |  PART 2

Abraham and Sarah were smack bang in the middle of a hopeless situation.

They had been promised so much. So many dreams and plans and goals and visions of what their future and beyond would look like. It was exciting. It was revolutionary. I can imagine the joy and anticipation they must have felt when they took those first steps of faith away from their original tribe and followed the voice of God into the unknown. Maybe they stayed up late at night talking about how wonderful God's promises fulfilled would be. What would it look like? Where would they end up? What would they name their children?

But as time went by, they discovered an obstacle to their dreams and promises. Sarah was not falling pregnant. For a dream that hinged on descendants, this was a massive problem.

It took Jesse and I two years to fall pregnant with our first child. Every month that I didn’t fall pregnant was another notch in my belt of disappointment. It seemed that everywhere I looked, women had ‘beautiful baby bellies'… Some of my friends even had ‘unplanned’ pregnancies… and while I was happy for them, I grew heartsick for my own unfulfilled dreams and hopes of having a child. Many of you know the journey infertility, much more than I, and you know that it's a really hard one to walk.

That was Sarah’s journey, too.

We all dream and hope for what we do not have but desperately want. Have you received a word or an inkling from the Divine in prayer, or through a trusted friend or minister that excited you? Or felt that you were born to do something specific? All the ‘emotions and feelings’ of hope dancing within you? Only to have those dreams and hopes failing to come to pass?

What happened next for Abraham and Sarah gets a lot of commentary from us modernists who view the story from afar… Sarah lost all hope of ever conceiving a child, so she told Abraham to go and impregnate their servant girl. They would raise the child as their own, and he would become the promise of God.

“How could she? What was she thinking? She must have had such small faith!”

Hang on!! Really?

I think we’ve all been where Sarah was. Maybe we haven’t told our husbands to go and sleep with someone else to get pregnant… But I know I've tried to birth God’s plan out of my own control when it was not happening the way I wanted it to. Hopelessness makes people sick. It’s not that Sarah had little faith… She had done everything God had told her. And still, the promise seemed like an impossibility.

For me, the focus of the story isn’t that Sarah should have kept on hoping and having faith instead of sending Abraham into the arms of someone else. It's that even when Sarah attempted to fix what she thought God couldn’t, making a right mess of things, God still showed up. Sarah still went on to have a child. The promise was not averted through her hope-sick heart, it happened as well as everything else.

When you throw an anchor overboard, it’s not absent from the boat, and present with the ground, it connects the ground and the boat through the murky ocean. It’s not either/or, it's everything joined together.

Feeling hopeless? You’re not alone. The Bible is full of stories of men and women who encountered hopeless situations and tried to make things happen to avoid the pain of waiting and disappointment… we are all the same. And the same God who was faithful to them, will be faithful to you too.

Hope is born of struggle. It’s not birthed out of ease or abundance, but out of knowing that you are enough, God is enough, his word is enough. And even though the waters and oceans of our lives can be crazy and dark and unknowable, we are connected to God by faith and hope.

And just as Sarah did, I’m learning that that is enough for me.

Go to Part 4 – Woman of Hope

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