December 5 – Icon: Bow and Arrows*, Hagar’s story. (Catching up today with two posts, because my thoughts yesterday just kept going and going, following the soap opera like story of Abraham’s family.
Hagar’s story is one of my favourite Bible stories. Hagar was:
- a slave, of Sarai, Abraham’s wife
- she was young, described as a ‘girl’, but clearly of child bearing age, since this is why Sarah gave her to Abraham for a wife, in an attempt to fulfill God’s promise, since Sarah was already 80 years old.
- Hagar got pregnant and entitled. Sarah, the first wife, jealous (probably) and angry (obviously) mistreated her.
- Hagar ran away into the desert and stopped for a drink at a spring
- An angel of the LORD appeared to her — I know! And Hagar, desperate, angry and hopeless, gives this God a name: El Roi, which mean “God sees”
- And the angel instructs her to return to Sarah, prophesying a future for her child and tells her to name him Ishmael, which means, “God hears”
For all my lonely, angry, desperate moments, when I feel someone else controls my life, my fate, and my future, can I remember that even then God sees and God hears?
(Read Hagar’s story in Genesis 16 and 21 – Icon chosen for Genesis 21:20 – God was with the boy (Ishmael), and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and become an expert with the bow and arrow)
December 6 – Icon: Ram — Isaac’s story, but I think I’d like to change this icon and the story, to Sarah’s story. But I’ll need a new Icon…any suggestions?
Meanwhile…the complex, multi-plotline story continues. In Genesis 18, God appears to Abraham in the form of three mysterious strangers. Abraham welcomes them and offers them rest and refreshment. One asks after Sarah. But Sarah is out of sight AND eavesdropping. She overhears him say that the next time he visits, she will have a son. Is that wild? Well, the Bible not so delicately describes the couple like this: “Now Abraham and Sarah were old…(and) it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women.” She’s 80+ here. So Sarah laughs, out loud — at this outrageous claim. The stranger hears her, calls her out and she denies it. But the stranger responds with this fabulous line: “It there anything too wonderful for the LORD?”
What impossible, or perhaps improbable situations do you have in your own life on this 6th day in Advent? Do they leave you exhausted like Hagar was in the desert, or laughing incredulously in secret. I have a few things I worry over, tucked just behind all that’s pressing in my life. Can God see, hear and enter those parts of my story too?
run, hide, or laugh, but
also listen, God wants to do
something wonderful