Balancing the Old and the New

As a whole, the modern-day church pays little mind to the Old Testament.  Sure, sermons may dip into that vast inkwell of antiquity for a random verse or two, but aside from camping in the strength and comfort of David's Psalms or delving deep into the books of prophecy for their link to and fulfillment in Jesus, the great bulk of the Old Testament is relegated to history--stored up on the high shelf and draped with a weighty quilt of dust.

I do understand the reasoning behind this choice, to some degree.  A pastor's speaking time is limited and is most likely to be in front of a diverse congregation.  Since there's no telling who might be sitting in that service or even if those persons will ever darken the door of a church house again, it seems quite necessary to present the gospel of salvation, which necessarily requires New Testament Scriptures.

As such, a sermon's primary text usually is situated firmly between Matthew and the book of Revelation.  Yet, what disturbs me is the thought that in the privacy of our own homes, Christians seeking to walk further down the path of righteousness do the same thing--they cling to studying again what they have unconsciously been led to believe is more important in the New as they neglect the "must-be-unimportant-because-the-pastor-rarely-turns-there" Old.

Perhaps my role as a K4-K5 Sunday School teacher allows me to see such a pronounced gap in the overall church congregation's continued exposure to Scripture in its entirety.  In the children's department, my young pupils are saturated with stories from The Old and New Testaments.

Yet, steeping oneself in the Old Testament should not stop once we don a cap and gown and fling wide the doors to adulthood.  These are not mere history lessons full of facts that, once memorized, need not be studied again.  Since we are adopted as sons and daughters, grafted as "wild olive shoots" into the true Vine, these pages are snapshots of our family tree  (Rom 11).  They are flickering glimpses through the veil to reveal who God is.  They are mirrored reflections of our own present-day society's coming demise if it, likewise, continues to turn its face from the Lord in pursuit of idols.

The prophet Isaiah made the importance of Old Testament Scripture clear when he stated,

"Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness and who seek the Lord: Look to the rock from which you were cut and to the quarry from which you were hewn; look to Abraham, your father, and to Sarah, who gave you birth.  When I called him he was but one, and I blessed him and made him many" (Is. 51:1-2).

In other words, as Christians, we should have this same longing to look back to our roots, which began with Abraham and Sarah. 

You don't have to look far to find someone in an intense quest to determine who they are and where they came from.  Perhaps that person is you.  Tracking one's ancestry is a booming business.  Now days, all it takes is a painless cheek swab and a couple hundred bucks to one of several genome projects to tell us about our ancestors.

Yes, our nation thrives on understanding its roots, on ferreting out ancient familial and cultural connections once thought lost.  The same must be true of our pursuit of who we are in the family of God.

I challenge you as I challenge myself--to ask what percentage of time this past year you've spent pouring over the inspired words of God found in The New Testament  as compared to the time you've spent pouring over the equally inspired words from God found in The Old Testament. 

If the scales are tipped so far that one side drags the floor, perhaps it's time to "Look to the rock from which you were cut" and see what God would teach you there.


Image: Geno Chip from National Geographic's genographic project.

Even If One Came Back From the Dead

What must it have been like to stand in the presence of God?  To realize you weren't dreaming or hallucinating but that in a twinkling, the veil between the visible and the invisible had parted to give you a glimpse of heavenly things in the form of an angel of the LORD, sent straight from the throne room with a message to you?

Just the thought strikes fear, awe, reverence, and a little bit of jealousy in me, all at the same time.  I would like to believe such an encounter would radically change my life, that it would erase any doubts that flicker through my mind on occasion.

And perhaps that is why I am still quicksand-stuck in Genesis with the story of the slave woman, Hagar, who was not worth much in the eyes of humanity but who suddenly found herself not only blessed to be living with God’s chosen people but also to be the recipient of God’s tangible presence—not once but twice.

The first time Hagar ran from Abraham and Sarah’s presence, “The angel of the Lord found Hagar near a spring in the desert” (Gen. 16:7).

In these verses describing the encounter, the Hebrew word for “LORD” is transliterated as “Yĕhovah.”  Jehovah. “Lord and master.”  “The existing one.”  The God of the Abraham and God's holy people in whom He placed His name forever.  This was the God she met with out in the wilderness.

As Blue Letter Bible states, Jehovah is “the promised name of God…While YHWH is first used in Genesis 2, God did not reveal Himself as YHWH until Exodus 3” when God told Moses to tell the Israelite slaves, “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, ‘The LORD God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you” (Ex. 3:15).

The Jehovah God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob came to save His people.

This same Jehovah God was the one to visit Hagar, already pregnant with Abraham’s seed, although not with the child of promise.  When Hagar responds to Him, “She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: ‘You are the God who sees me,’ for she said, ‘I have now seen the One who sees me’” (Gen. 16:13).

Here, her words seem to express a belief in Jehovah God in that she confesses with her mouth the LORD as God.  At this point, although the Scripture doesn't say it directly,  I have always believed her return to the camp serves as evidence of her submission to Jehovah as her Lord and Master.

Yet, two facts make me wonder if the submission were only lip service to this Jehovah God and not a submission of the heart to Him as her Master and Lord.  First is the fact that Ishmael grows into a young man who cruelly mocks young Isaac, an evil attitude that had to come from somewhere.  Could it be that he had picked up on his mother's ill will toward Sarah and Isaac? Had she even complained to the boy of how Abraham and Sarah had mistreated both her and him?  Second is Hagar’s subsequent stony-faced,unrepentant exit from Abraham’s camp and refusal to call on the name of the Lord even when such hard heartedness would almost certainly lead to the death of her son.

This idea seems even more likely considering the second time she leaves Abraham’s camp by force and meets with God in the wilderness, she does not meet with Jehovah.  Instead, Scripture records, “And God heard the voice of the lad; and the angel of God called to Hagar out of heaven and said unto her, ‘What aileth thee, Hagar? Fear not; for God hath heard the voice of the lad where he is’” (Gen. 21: 17).

Here, the God who comforts her is the Hebrew word for “'elohiym.”  This is God in the plural sense, as in God the creator of Genesis 1-2.  This is not Jehovah God.  

It is interesting that God chose to come to her and Ishmael as Elohim, not as Jehovah.  While both words for "God" are used thousands of times each in the Old Testament, I strongly believe this shift in who God presents Himself as is extremely important.

But why did God come to Hagar as Elohim and not as Jehovah?  

I honestly can't say for certain, and no other commentator I've consulted has thought this detail important enough to even mention.  Yet, I wonder if it was because since God is the One who sees into our hearts, He had already seen Hagar's lack of faith in Him.  He already knew that in her heart, she had rejected Him as "Jehovah," as Lord, Master and Savior of her life and, as such, He came to her not as her Lord and Master but merely as the One True God of the universe who is the God of all creation...even those parts that reject Him as Lord.

If this is true, then Hagar's exile from Abraham's camp and entrance into a wilderness was merely a fulfillment of what had already happened in her heart.  This physical exile from God's people simply reflected what had already occurred in Hagar's soul as she had already spiritually rejected and exiled herself from God as her Lord and Master, as her savior.

This view of Hagar's heart seems to hold more validity when one considers how Scripture concludes the passage on Hagar: "Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink.  God was with the boy as he grew up. He lived in the desert and became an archer. While he was living in the Desert of Paran, his mother got a wife for him from Egypt" (Gen. 21: 19-20).

Unlike with the first encounter when God spoke to Hagar and she followed by confessing Him as LORD Jehovah God, this time, Hagar says nothing at all.  She does not confess Him with her mouth.  She does not give thanks.  She does not demonstrate awe that He is a "God who sees."  Instead, Scripture simply says she fills up her skin with water and gives it to her son.

Elohim hears Ishmael's cry.  Elohim calls to Hagar.  Elohim opens her eyes. Likewise, Elohim is the God who is with Ishmael as he grows up...not Jehovah.  

God's protection to both Ishmael and Hagar, then, is either an example of them being blessed because of Abraham's faith in God OR, equally likely, that this is an example of "common grace" versus "saving grace" where God extends common grace to all humanity, even those who reject Him as master and Lord of their lives.  

Finally, the v. 19 description of Ishmael living in the desert as an archer seems to portray him as a self-made man, not one reliant upon God for his daily bread.  And, that last sentence in v. 20 showing Hagar return to her pagan, idolatrous roots--the land of Egypt--to procure Ishmael a bride seems most compelling.

Perhaps this is why Paul refers to Hagar as being a symbolic figurehead for all those enslaved by the law and sin, saying, "Hagar stands for Mount Sinai in Arabia and corresponds to the present city of Jerusalem, because she is in slavery with her children" (Gal. 4:25).

Two visits from the Lord.  And yet, it doesn't seem to have been enough to change Hagar's heart. It's terribly sad and scary at the same time, how hardened our hearts can become,  Yet, Jesus spoke of the same thing in the New Testament story where the rich man in hell begs for Lazarus to be sent to his family and Abraham responds, "‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead’”(Lk. 16:31).

It's not a miracle, a dead man walking, the audible voice of the Lord, or even an angel that saves our souls.  It is the Word of God taking root in our hearts that will work the miracle of salvation.  No other inexplicable phenomenon is needed or will even transform us if we merely believe with our heads but fail to submit with our hearts.

Disillusioned By God & His People: Part II

I can look back in my past and see God's footprints as He carried me through one trial or another, those watershed moments that broke my heart and buckled my knees so I couldn't take another step on my own. In hindsight, I know God has always been for me, even when I couldn't lift my eyes to see Him or couldn't comprehend the why for the pain of the what.

Somewhere along the way, I bought into the assumption that the more I turned to God in these times of trial, the easier it would be to turn to him the next time I entered another trial, for I realize that there is always another struggle somewhere in front of me, just past the vanishing point where the horizon meets the sky.  

I assumed that as I matured in Christ, it would just become second nature to encounter the next difficulty sent my way, accept it as part of His plan, and move forward by His grace.  

But that's not how it works.  

For starters, no two trials are alike, so learning how to live abundantly in one trial doesn't make overcoming the next trial an easy task.  Then, there's the problem of reconciling what we know with what we expect--we may know in our hearts that another trial is coming, but we never expect it to come so soon on the heels of the last trial.  We also don't expect the next trial to be as hard as it always is; in our Christian walk, we assume maturity will make the trials easier to endure, if for no other reason than because we're more experienced in dealing with them.  

Yet, each time, we're blindsided by the sheer magnitude of the thunderstorm bearing down on us when seconds before, nothing was on the radar except clear blue skies.  As such, the latest trial is much like the first trial God sent our way.  It is a new choice to either turn to God or turn away from God.

Last week's message ended with Hagar running from an abusive Sarah, meeting the God of Israel, and returning to Abraham and Sarah where she would give birth to Ishmael.  Out there in the wilderness, the Lord had come down and spoken to her, offering her comfort and a promise that through Ishmael, her descendants would become too many to count.  In that moment of trial and despair, she chose to turn to the Lord, saying, ^"'You are a God who sees'” (Gen. 16:13).

Years passed fairly uneventfully as she continued her life as Sarah's maidservant.  Then came the birth of Isaac, the true child of promise, who, in her motherly eyes, usurped her son's place in both Abraham's heart and inheritance after all these years.  

After Ishmael incited Sarah's ire by taunting the young Isaac, slave mother and son were sent packing.  evicted from the camp and with nowhere to turn.  Scripture records, "So Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and gave them to Hagar, putting them on her shoulder, and gave her the boy, and sent her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of Beersheba" (Gen. 21:14).

Here Hagar was, sixteen years later, right back in the same wilderness to which she had fled before. The irony of the situation couldn't have escaped her as she made her way into that place where she had once met with God.

Yes, it was the same place, but it was still a different trial.  And while Hagar chose to believe God those many years ago, things weren't so certain this time around.

For starters, the absence of any dialogue on her part when Abraham sends the pair away shows a woman as hard as flint.  If I had been Hagar being sent away with only a skin of water and bread, you'd better believe the annals of history would record me repenting, begging, pleading, and promising nothing shy of my firstborn child just to not be turned out on the road with thieves and jackals.  Yet, Scripture records nothing of the sort here.

Hagar's tight lipped retreat into the wilderness shows a proud woman...and a very angry woman, too.  I imagine she was so furious with Abraham for following Sarah's orders to send them packing that her pride wouldn't allow her to ask Abraham's forgiveness for Ishmael's actions. 

I imagine her turning on one heel and wordlessly marching away into the dust and sand, her head held stiff and high....never turning back for a second glimpse of the life she was leaving behind. No, her body would have stayed erect and unyielding until she was out of sight, as if she feared her resolve would crumble if she turned her head for just an instant.

But adrenaline fueled by anger can only last so long, and when the heat of the day along with the seriousness of her situation set in, Hagar had two choices--return to Abraham and beg for mercy or continue on this path to nowhere.  Drowning in her own pride, she chose the latter.

Still, Hagar did have another choice.  She could have called on God, the One who sees.  Yet, she refused.   

Scripture records, "When the water in the skin was used up, she left the boy under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him, about a bowshot away, for she said, 'Do not let me see the boy die.' And she sat opposite him, and lifted up her voice and wept" (Gen. 21:15-16). 

Death was imminent.  And still, Hagar did not call out to God for help.  She may have believed God had simply sided with Abraham and against her. Perhaps she had even convinced herself the previous encounter with God in the wilderness was just a fluke, that she had misheard Him, or that He had gone back on His word, abandoning her like everyone else in her life.  In truth, though, I believe she was angry with God, that she would have rather died in her anger than ask for His help, blaming Him for her present plight.

Although she may have been hardened with anger, Ishmael did cry out: "God heard the lad crying; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, 'What is the matter with you, Hagar? Do not fear, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is. Arise, lift up the lad, and hold him by the hand, for I will make a great nation of him^.' Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water; and she went and filled the skin with water and gave the lad a drink" (Gen. 21:17-19).

The phrase "What is the matter with you, Hagar?" could just as easily say, "What's your problem, Hagar!?  Why haven't you called to me for help?  Don't you know I'm just a call away? Are your pride and anger really worth your death and the death of your son?"  It reminds me of when Jesus said to Philip, "Have I been so long with you, and yet you have not come to know Me?" (Jn. 14:9).

God then reached out and provided that life-giving water to Hagar and Ishmael, but this mercy wasn't extended because of anything Hagar had done.  No.  It was extended because Ishmael cried out for help, and the Lord answered him.

This wounds me, the thought that like Hagar, my child may be the one who calls out to the Lord for me when I am too hurt, proud, or angry to seek His face.

Hagar knew the God of Abraham.  She had met Him in a most intimate way sixteen years earlier. Yet, this time, Hagar chose to embrace her anger, pride, and despair, and turn away from the Lord.  As much as I'd like to shake my head at her unbelief, I honestly can't.  If I've learned anything in my thirty six years, it's that my proper response to God in the next trial is not assured.  

A Christian can never grow complacent, believing him or herself "mature enough" to always respond as the Lord would have him do.  Turning to God in the midst of a trial will always be a conscious choice we will need to make again and again.  But we can be encouraged, knowing that although we change like the shifting sands, our Father never changes.  He will always be there for us, waiting for us to petition Him and rest in His arms of mercy as the storms of this life rage around us.

Disillusioned By God & His People: Part I

A little over three years ago, popular author Anne Rice made front page news by posting to her Facebook page that she was leaving Christianity.  The news was surprising, especially since she had so publicly abandoned atheism for Christianity just years earlier in her novel Called Out of Darkness: A Spiritual Confession, a compelling memoir tracing the winding path that took her from atheism to faith in Jesus.

Yet, here she was, writing, "Today I quit being a Christian ... It's simply impossible for me to ‘belong’ to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else." 

Sadly, Rice isn't the only person I know who has turned her back on religion...and maybe on her faith.  While there are a multitude of reasons many turn their back on both religion and God (two separate things in my book), two seem to top the list--the actions of Christians and the trials of this life.

I know too many people who have been hurt by professing Christians or who have witnessed too much hypocrisy in the church to the point where they incorrectly equate these people's actions to be representative of true Christianity.  Then, there are the others whose life circumstances have been incredibly difficult to the point where they've chosen to believe no God of goodness would allow such heartache.  

Both groups have said "enough" and turned their backs as they make their own path across a barren desert of their own choosing.

Abraham and Sarah's servant, Hagar, would fall into both these groups--those disenchanted with the actions of those who claim to be God's people and those whose life is cruel is unfair.

A day was coming when she would turn her back on God for these very reasons.  

But before then, Hagar met the Lord.

It is easy to look at the servant Hagar's life and conclude that if anyone had a grievance against God for the hand she'd been dealt, it was her.  Once a slave in Egypt, she had been casually given to Abraham, forcing her to leave behind likely the only country she'd ever known, friends, and perhaps even family to join these foreigners whose customs, God, and language were strange to her.

Then her new mistress, Sarah, decided to offer Hagar to her husband Abraham so the two of them could conceive an heir.  As was the life of a slave, Hagar had no choice in the matter.  She couldn't refuse.  And she had nowhere to run even if she did.  

Yet, perhaps she realized that with this forced coupling came her chance to become more than what she was--a somebody in the eyes of her master and perhaps even more...to escape slavery for a better life.  The wheels started turning in her head, how to work this to her advantage.    

Those dreams must have seemed close enough to touch because once Hagar became pregnant with Abraham's son, she grew quite haughty.  Scripture records, "and when she saw that she had conceived, her mistress was despised in her sight" (Gen. 16:4).  Down South, we'd say she had grown too big for her britches, vaulting herself before her mistress in her own self-importance.  

In Hagar's mind, she had succeeded where Sarah had failed.  She had provided what Abraham wanted most when Sarah could not.  She was the one who should be pampered and held in high regard, what with the child of promise (or so she believed) growing inside her swelling belly.  

I imagine she began to act the role of the queen bee around camp, perhaps speaking disdainfully to her mistress, perhaps refusing to do her mistress' bidding or grumbling as she did, and perhaps even giving orders, herself.  

If she had hoped Abraham would stand up for her, would exalt her out of her lowliness as a servant now that she carried his heir, she was shaken from this delusion in short order.   Her place in Abraham's "kingdom" hadn't changed.  

Surely to her surprise, when Sarah complained about Hagar's attitude, Abraham refused to intervene in what he likely considered women's troubles.  In one simple sentence, he gave Sarah carte blanche to treat Hagar as she wished, saying "Behold, your maid is in your power; do to her what is good in your sight" (v.6a).

 So, Sarah did what one would expect and knocked her servant down to size: Scripture records that Sarah "treated her harshly, and she [Hagar] fled from her presence" (v. 6b).

Where Hagar expected to go, I'm not sure, but I doubt she had anywhere particular in mind.  Her heightened emotional state brought on by pregnancy combined with the dream-crushing disappointment of her child's father refusing to stand up for her and exalt her above his own wife (that should have been expected)--Hagar had been shoved firmly back into her social place and couldn't deal with what she perceived as a demotion.  So, she just ran into the nowhere of the wilderness.

 Yet, there in her despair is where God found Hagar.  

There, the angel of the Lord met her, saying, “Return to your mistress, and submit yourself to her authority...I will greatly multiply your descendants so that they will be too many to count....Behold, you are with child, And you will bear a son; And you shall call his name Ishmael, Because the Lord has given heed to your affliction" (v. 9-11).

These words to return to Sarah and submit must have chafed even while the other part of the angel's message left her feeling vindicated. Her descendants would be too many to count.  

Her.  A woman.  A slave.  A foreigner living in exile from her homeland.  Her descendants would be too many to count.

Then, "she called the name of the Lord who spoke to her, 'You are a God who sees'” (v. 13).

Hagar's mistress and even Abraham may have seen her as nothing more than a servant for breeding an heir.   But the God of Abraham saw her. He heard her.  She mattered to Him.

In this instant, she met the God of Abraham.  I believe it was then that Yahweh became her God as well, for Hagar obeyed the angel's command and returned to Sarah where she gave birth to Ishmael.  

Whether Hagar returned with a sincerely submissive spirit (I doubt it), whether the Lord's promise was enough to tuck away in her heart to get her through the daily grind of life as a servant, or whether Sarah and Hagar came to some sort of truce, whether voiced or unspoken--I don't know.  But life moved forward without recorded incident. Scripture swiftly leaps over Ismael's entire childhood, not mentioning Hagar again until Isaac's weaning when her son Ishmael was sixteen or seventeen years old.   

Did Hagar have reason to be disillusioned with a God who not only allowed her to remain a slave but who also instructed her to return to a mistress who mistreated her?  Did she have reason to be disillusioned with a God whose professed chosen people were allowed to afflict their slaves and use them as they wished, seemingly without consequences?

Sure.  Abraham and Sarah didn't act like we would expect God's people to act.  And God didn't miraculously change Hagar's circumstances once she met Him.

Yet, here, she accepted God for who He was, not for who she wanted or even imagined Him to be.  She also accepted God based on her encounter with Him and not because of her encounters with others who professed to be His followers.

And therein lies a lesson for us all in how we should relate to God.  As hard as it may be, we cannot allow others' actions to determine whether we do or don't seek a relationship with God.  Also, when God doesn't act according to our expectations, we must ask ourselves if we are serving the God of Scripture or a God of our making and then choose to turn towards Him and not away from Him.

To do the contrary is the equivalent of walking aimlessly through that wilderness where Hagar first ran, a dry, barren place without the living water to quench our thirst that only can be found in Christ Jesus.

When We Are Wounded By God's People

Some of the worst hurts in this life come not just from family, friends, or the general population but from God's people.  The problem?  We expect more from those professing to be like Jesus.  What's more, we also oftentimes let our guard down more around fellow believers.  And why not?  Christians should be the people we expect our hearts to be the safest with, the ones we can trust to act justly more than any others on the face of the earth....right?

Wrong. 

Somehow, we get it in our minds that when a person chooses to become a follower of Christ, he is hit over the head with a Fairy Godmother-esque magic wand of salvation that transforms him in the twinkling of an eye into the spitting image of Christ.  We expect his struggle with that old fleshly nature to be done away with, his propensity towards sin to just vanish.  In short, we expect every Christian to go to sleep a sinner and wake up as a perfect clone of Jesus. 

But the salvation process doesn't work that way. 

The concept of salvation is a past, a present perfect, and a future action.  I was saved.  I am being saved.  I will be saved.  And because of that, a newborn, middle-aged, or even long-tenured Christian will spend a lifetime in a state of becoming like Christ but never, not ever, completely achieving that level of perfection.  In short, every Christian will plod down life's path of what Scripture refers to as "sanctification," a ten cent word meaning "the process of becoming holy." 

Yes...note that word process.  Becoming holy, like Jesus, is not instant.

And yet, even if we understand this concept, the knowledge doesn't help our hearts be any less broken when God's people fail to act in accordance with how Jesus would act.

In her latest book Wounded by God's People: Discovering How God's Love Heals our Hearts, Anne Graham Lotz pulls a few skeletons from her own emotional closet as she explores how many of her most painful hurts have been inflicted by the hands of God's people.

Lotz begins with the Biblical story of Hagar, using it as a starting point for exploring how everyone is wounded and how that pain can cause the wounded to lash out and wound others in their path. 

The majority of Lotz's book is an attempt to show the "what happens next" after we have been wounded.    Do we run from God?  Do we inflict pain in return?  Do we wander around aimlessly in rejection? Do we reject God and all his people? Turn our backs from him in stubbornness? 

Or do we choose to move forward, turn towards God, forgive, and be reconciled?

The book explores each of these choices as they are demonstrated in the Old Testament story of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Ishmael, and Isaac.  In fact, each chapter begins with a specific printed Scripture passage, followed by a personal example from Lotz' own life, then a deeper look into the specific Scripture and how it can relate to each of us who has been wounded.

While I did not find this book as deep as many of Lotz' previous books (such as her Just Give Me Jesus or I Saw the Lord), I do believe that was part of the point--to present a familiar, simple story and connect it to every man and woman, guiding them to Jesus in a culture when professing Christians are all too often driving them away from Christianity and anything associated with Jesus.

Perhaps you are like Hagar.  Perhaps you have been wounded and rejected by God's people.  Perhaps you have been sent "into the wilderness" and are blind to God's presence (Gen. 21:14).  Perhaps you even blame Him for what has happened in your life. 

When we are there--helpless, hopeless, abandoned, and alone--we should remember well this story of Hagar, how God stooped down from heaven and found her.

I can't help but think of that old Fanny Crosby hymn, the second verse and chorus of which reads:

A wonderful Savior is Jesus my Lord,
He taketh my burden away,
He holdeth me up and I shall not be moved,
He giveth me strength as my day

He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock,
That shadows a dry, thirsty land;
He hideth my life in the depths of His love,
And covers me there with His hand.

Parenting 101 in the Desert

They say you can read The Bible through thousands of times and learn something new with each reading.  And why not?  A reading is couched within different life circumstances, different phases of maturity that drive our quest for meaning in passages fraught with multiple levels of understanding.

Over the past two weeks, I've been plumb stuck in a brain fog as I've sought to understand the Jerry Springer-esque family dynamics of Genesis' Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Hagar, and Ishmael.

On our weekly prayer walks so far this September, my pastor has asked what I've been reading, learning, studying.  Each time, my cheeks have burned, embarrassed, as I've stumbled over my admission that I am still mulling over Genesis.  It sounds like a cop-out, an admission of someone not really in the Word at all.

But, the truth is I've been trying to make meaning out of a passage that has suddenly made little sense to me, one I thought I was comfortable with when I read it in the past, but now find it deeply disturbing.

The difference in then and now?  Then, I had not experienced the sacrifices a mother makes for her children.  I saw only through the eyes of a woman, not through the eyes of a mother. Now? I know a mother's love...and a mother's wrath. 

After Sarah abused her suddenly haughty servant Hagar, after Hagar ran away to find the "God who Sees" her in the desert, and after Hagar returned to give birth to Abraham's son Ishmael, Scripture glosses over a decade and a half until that time when Isaac, the true son of promise, is born to Sarah and Abraham.

We pick up with Isaac's birth, his naming, and then his weaning.  And on the day his mother is to stop nursing him, Scripture shows us a picture of a sixteen-year-old Ishmael mocking the toddler Isaac.  Commentator Matthew Henry says the original Hebrew more readily describes Ishmael's actions as "persecution," but in our day, we would likely refer to it as a good case of mean-spirited bullying.

Either way, there was evil intent on Ishmael's part, and it's readily understandable.  Ismael had been the apple of his daddy Abraham's eye for a dozen or so years before the golden child came along.  And overnight, with Isaac's birth, Ishmael's place in the succession had been supplanted by this little kid who was referred to by all as the "child of promise."

Yikes.  After all these years, suddenly being treated as the second-class son of a slave rather than Abraham's firstborn son and heir--with all its rights, perks, and privileges--had to sting.  It had to feel unfair.  And so, he lashed out at young Isaac, seeking to persecute the object of his displacement who had done nothing more than be born.

Of course, Sarah saw the bullying.  I'm guessing Sarah was a hover parent.  Heaven only knows I would be, too, if I had waited until the ripe old age of 90 to bear my first and only son.  I can imagine her instantly scooping up that precious curly-headed boy and rushing straight to Abraham's tent, her hands on her hips as she spat venom at her husband, demanding, "Get rid of that slave woman. Get rid of her son. The slave woman’s son will never have a share of the family’s property with my son Isaac” (Gen. 21:10).

Sarah's maternal anger pierced through her word choice.  No matter how long they had lived in quasi-peace as a rather dysfunctional family, now, she no longer referred to the two objects of her wrath as Ishmael and Hagar. No.  Now, they were nothing more than "that slave woman" and "her son." 

Abraham was distraught.  As Scripture says, "What Sarah said upset Abraham very much. After all, Ishmael was his son" (Gen. 21:11).  He was in an impossible situation.  So, God stepped in with a solution: "But God said to him, 'Do not be so upset about the boy and your servant Hagar. Listen to what Sarah tells you, because your family line will continue through Isaac. I will make the son of your servant into a nation also. I will do it because he is your child'" (v. 12-13).

Perhaps Abraham knew this was the best and only solution.  Perhaps he had already picked up on Ishmael's attitude towards Isaac, maybe even had witnessed with his own eyes another example of Ishmael persecuting the young boy and knew two competing roosters in the hen house would only lead to trouble

Either way, Abraham did not procrastinate, did not question God's plan, did not even mourn the decision although his father's heart surely must have broken.  Instead, "Early the next morning Abraham got some food and a bottle of water. The bottle was made out of animal skin. He gave the food and water to Hagar. He placed them on her shoulders. Then he sent her away with the boy. She went on her way and wandered in the desert of Beersheba" (v. 14).

This is where I have stumbled most, reading with a mother's eyes.  How could Abraham--who by all accounts was quite affluent at this point in his 100+ year old life--how could he just send Hagar off with just some food and water?  Why couldn't he have given her a horse? a donkey? a herd? a servant? or at least a trusted male companion to guide her safely to the next city or even small town?  How could he just send the mother of his child and his firstborn son out into the desert with nothing more than "some food and a bottle of water?"

My mother's heart has wanted to criticize Abraham for this action, to treat him as the villain in this part of the story.  Initially when I read this passage, I thought this was a good example of there being a wrong way to do the right thing.  And honestly?  I'm still not sure that's a bad interpretation of the facts.

But I think there's more to Abraham's actions than that.  When God told Abraham to send Hagar away, He had also informed Abraham that He would "make the son of your servant into a nation also" (v. 13).  With this knowledge fresh in his mind and heart, then, perhaps Abraham's sending Hagar and Ishmael out into the burning hot desert with nothing more than food and a bottle of water was an act of faith on his part, a faith in God that HE would protect the pair as they wandered in the barrenness where life-giving water was nearly impossible to find.

Perhaps Abraham's refusal to provide more for Hagar and Ishmael was also his attempt to show them that they must not rely on him any further for support but must rely fully on God, a lesson both would quickly learn two verses later when their supplies ran out and they had nowhere else to look but up.

This is the lesson I've been trying to see for three weeks now.  

I am a natural mother.  I have this innate ability to want to mother everyone, to want to care for others even not of my blood with a mother's heart.  Yet, there comes a point when I must turn my back on my natural mothering instincts that say "take care of him!!!" and, instead, choose to have faith that God is the ultimate provider.  There comes a point when I must point a person to God as the ultimate life-giver and not me.

Had Abraham provided for all Hagar and Ishmael's needs when he send them away, they would have had no need to turn to God.

Although it may break our hearts at time, let us seek the discernment to know when to help and when to stand back and allow God to provide.

Telling the Future: Why God Usually Doesn't

There was a time when I didn't know if my house would ever be filled with the chaos and high pitched laughter of little ones.  In fact, several years were fraught with the stress and shame of infertility treatments, the loss of two babies, and the feelings of incredible guilt and inadequacy, all which culminated in one particularly gut-wrenching day when a new series of tests came in and the nurse answered my "So this is it?" question with a sad grimace and a nod.

We had reached the end of the road.  There would be no children.

Until that day, I was positive we would get pregnant, that God would work a miracle as he had with Hannah, Sarah, Rachel, and Elizabeth.  I read my Bible, listened to sermons, and went about my day to day life with my ears and eyes hyper sensitive to any word from the Lord about our struggles, any direction He might give, any tiny hint of hope.

I wanted a baby so badly that many times, I read what I wanted to read, I heard what I wanted to hear.  In short, I saw God's answer everywhere, in everything...but it wasn't God at all. It was my own longing to make my own future.  But, it wasn't until I gave up and accepted whatever He chose for us that He worked His miracles...on His timeline.

Without this experience, I might still believe that knowing the future is a good thing.  Perhaps I might still be convinced that if I just knew why God allowed this or that trial in my life or if He just showed me where this was all headed or how long I had to endure that difficulty, then going through the storm would be easier.

Yet, I know the real truth--if God were to give us a hint at our future, we would feel the need to "help" Him along the way.  And the results would be catastrophic.

Such was the case with Abraham and Sarah.

God had told Abraham the future, that "You will have a son of your own who will inherit what you have" (Gen. 15:4).  Both Abraham and Sarah believed God.  They had faith.  Yet, after so many years passed, Sarah decided to help bring God's prophecy to pass.  

Scripture records that "Sarai, Abram’s wife, had no children, but she had a slave girl from Egypt named Hagar.  Sarai said to Abram, 'Look, the Lord has not allowed me to have children, so have sexual relations with my slave girl. If she has a child, maybe I can have my own family through her'" (Gen. 16:1-2).

Sarah nor Abraham consulted God in this.  They attempted to bring about God's vision of the future through human means.  The result from this meddling was a boy named Ishmael.  Yet, he was not the son of promise.  God confirmed this later when He said, "[Sarah] will be the mother of many nations. Kings of nations will come from her.^'...Then Abraham said to God, 'Please let Ishmael be the son you promised.'   God said, 'No, Sarah your wife will have a son, and you will name him Isaac. I will make my agreement with him to be an agreement that continues forever with all his descendants'" (Gen. 17:15-19). 

Abraham and Sarah's attempt to force God's hand is still playing out centuries later in the Middle East as the Islamic descendants of Ishmael fight against the Jews.  

This same type of "taking over for God" happened later in Israel's history with Rebekah and her son, Jacob.

When Isaac was old and ready to die, he called in his older son, Esau to give him the blessing and inheritance typically given the older son.  Scripture records that "Rebekah was listening as Isaac said this to his son Esau. She said to her son Jacob, 'Listen, I heard your father saying to your brother Esau, ⁷ ‘Kill an animal and prepare some tasty food for me to eat. Then I will bless you in the presence of the Lord before I die.’ So obey me, my son, and do what I tell you.Go out to our goats and bring me two of the best young ones. I will prepare them just the way your father likes them.Then you will take the food to your father, and he will bless you before he dies” (Gen. 27:5-10).

Why would Rebekah interfere and trick her nearly blind husband into giving her favorite son, Jacob, the blessing and not her older son, Esau, as was tradition? What was she thinking!?

In all honesty, I think she was trying to "help" God just as did Sarah.  Years earlier when the two boys were still struggling in her womb, "The Lord said to her, 'Two nations are in your body, and two groups of people will be taken from you.  One group will be stronger than the other, and the older will serve the younger'" (Gen. 25:23).

Could God have accomplished this future without Rebekah's help?  Certainly.  Yet, knowing the future led Rebekah to connive to bring it about, to force God's will to come to pass on her timeline and not His.  And due to her interference, the resulting animosity between two brothers exploded into enmity between two warring nations--Israel (Jacob) and Esau (Edom).

From Genesis to Malachi, the descendants of Jacob and Esau would be constant enemies.  From Esau came the Edomites from the land of Edom, and because of the hatred set in motion by Rebekah's meddling, several generations later, the Edomites refused to allow Moses and the ex-slave children of Israel to cross through their land on their way from Egypt to Canaan.

Even later, Esau's descendants helped destroy the temple in Israel.  The prophet Obadiah exclaims of Edom: "You did violence to your relatives, the Israelites, so you will be covered with shame and destroyed forever. You stood aside without helping while strangers carried Israel’s treasures away. When foreigners entered Israel’s city gate and threw lots to decide what part of Jerusalem they would take, you were like one of them" (Ob. 10-11).  King David even speaks of Edom's role in the destruction of Jerusalem, saying, "Lord, remember what the Edomites did on the day Jerusalem fell. They said, 'Tear it down! Tear it down to its foundations!'"

It makes me wonder if this animosity, this blood-revenge hatred would have been passed down from generation to generation had Rebekah not interfered, had she allowed God to bring His prophecy to pass without her help. Or would God have accomplished the same outcome but without all the animosity.

Sarah and Rebekah show us why God does not often reveal the future to us.  If you know what's coming down the road, you're hyper alert, looking everywhere for the turn-off that you know will take you to your destination.  The problem is, when you're watching and waiting, every exit looks like the right one.

The next time you or I wish we knew what our future held, we should remember God's graciousness in not giving us what we ask for.  

In our humanity, we'd probably just screw it up. 

When Your Family Tree is Sick: Part II

These are the people I am most thankful for.  My husband. My parents. My children.

Given the chance, I would willingly exchange my own life for theirs, and in many small ways, I do that already each time I devote minutes, hours, days, and years to express my love to them. A true love is sacrifice.  Yet, that love can only go so far, do so much.

Last week, we began a two-part glimpse into a Christian's role in others' salvation.

In Part I, we looked at those in our family tree who are hopelessly lost and how we are unable to save them with either our own righteous, loving obedience to God or our prayers on their behalf. Although we who are Christians want to save the entire world and especially our loved ones, each person is ultimately accountable for his or her own soul.

As God said through the prophet Ezekiel, "'if a country sins against Me by committing unfaithfulness, and I stretch our My hand against it...even though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job were in its midst, by their own righteousness they could only deliver themselves,' declares the Lord GOD" (Ez. 14:13-14)*.

Part II of the question asks what the Christian's response should be if he can't pray someone into heaven.  Does he just give up and stop praying for them entirely?

In the previous verse and in verse twenty of the same chapter from Ezekiel, God mentions three pillars of faith who give insight into this part of the question.  Noah, Daniel, and Job interceded for those around them.

Noah is recorded as "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God" (Gen. 6:9).  Later, Peter refers to him as "a preacher of righteousness" (Gen. 6:9, 2 Pet. 2:5). While I don't find a specific example of Noah praying for the people before the flood, the word "preacher" in the previous verse means "God's ambassador, and the herald or proclaimer of the divine word"**  

Throughout The Old Testament, a pattern appears of God's ambassadors interceding for the unrighteous after they receive a divine warning of impending wrath.  Moses repeatedly interceded for Israel while Abraham interceded for the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.  Surely after God's warning and throughout the 90+ years it took him to build the ark, Noah not only shared with everyone what was going to happen but also prayed to God for their deliverance.

Sadly, as history records, not one repented; not one was delivered.

Unlike Noah, in the cases of Daniel and Job, it is more obvious that they interceded for their people.

In the story of Job, Scripture specifically records him praying for family and friends.  

For his children, he continually prayed: "Job would send and consecrate them, rising up early in the morning and offering burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, 'Perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.' Thus Job did continually" (Job. 1:5).

Job also "prayed for his friends" (Job 42:10).  But neither his children's deliverance nor his friends' deliverance came through his intercession.  

Instead, his friends' deliverance came from their own actions of offering a burnt offering in repentance before the Lord. As the Lord said to them, "My servant Job will pray for you. For I will accept him so that I may not do with you according to your folly" (Job. 42: 8).  They obeyed and were spared by their own actions.

Daniel, as well, prayed for his people.  

In a quite lengthy prayer, Daniel "prayed to the Lord my God and confessed and said, 'Alas, O Lord we. . .have sinned, committed iniquity, acted wickedly and rebelled, even turning aside from Your commandments and ordinances.  Moreover, we have not listened to Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings, our princes, our fathers and all the people of the land" (Dan. 9:4-6).  

He requested God to relent in His wrath on Israel: "let now Your anger and Your wrath turn away from Your city Jerusalem, Your holy mountain; for because of our sins and the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and Your people have become a reproach to all those around us" 

Yet, even Daniel could not save the city of Jerusalem because of the people's sin.

 What, then, should a Christian's response be?  

The answer is clear--the Word of God demonstrates that the righteous must still stand in the gap, must still intercede for those who do not know Christ. 

In the New Testament, the apostle Paul encouraged us to do likewise: "First of all, then, I urge that entreaties and prayers, petitions and thanksgivings, be made on behalf of all men" (1 Tim 2:1).

May we be able to say with conviction that "my heart’s desire and my prayer to God for them is for their salvation" (Rom 10:1).



*I wanted to note that some commentators believe that the Daniel mentioned here is not the same man who wrote the book of Daniel.  Although I humbly disagree, the idea that the righteous intercede for others is a sound tenet found throughout scripture.  I can't help but believe if this text does refer to another Daniel, he, too, would have interceded for his people.

**Blue Letter Bible Online.  

What's More Terrifying Than an Earthquake?

After the earthquake in Haiti, after Hurricane Katrina, after the twin towers fell in New York--these are the times when some journalist pulls a major religious personality on screen and asks the same question--where was God when all this happened?

Several times, I've seen that religious personality be God's mouthpiece, claiming the disaster was a direct outpouring of God's wrath, was His judgment--on Haiti for its practice of witchcraft, on New Orleans for its culture of voodoo, on America for its pride, greed, and moral decline.

Yes, when Christians think of God's wrath, great devastation worthy of a front page story comes to mind.

We SEE God's wrath as a hurricane, earthquake, or tornado that makes a town look like Tinker Toys after a two-year-old gets her hands on them.  We SEE His wrath as a tsunamis with its wall of water towering over the tallest building.

But I would argue there is a more terrifying outpouring of Godly wrath and judgment that goes almost unnoticed--the wrath of abandonment.

For instance, in Ezekiel when a group of elders comes to consult the prophet, God doesn't give the answer they expect, telling them to "Repent and turn away from your idols and turn your faces away from all your abominations" (Ez. 14:6).  In other words, God wants His people to turn their faces away from sin and toward to Him.

If His listeners refuse to repent, though, God spells out the nature of His wrath and judgment: "anyone of the house of Israel...who separates himself from Me, sets up his idols in his heart...I will set My face against that man...I will cut him off from among My people" (Ez. 14:7-8).

The punishment for not repenting?  Abandonment.  God will cut the person off, will leave him to his fleshly heart's basest desires with no Spirit to keep him in check, will allow him to believe his own delusions with no Spirit to whisper truth, will not put forth His holy hand to stem the tide of evil.

We've seen an example of God stemming the tide of evil by keeping a man's desires in check before.  When Abraham deceived King Abimelech, saying that his wife Sarah was actually his sister, God warned the King not to touch her.  Abimelech responds that he is innocent to which God replies, "I also kept you from sinning against Me; therefore I did not let you touch her" (Gen. 20:6).

Scripture even says that when God abandons man in His wrath, He may send a delusion in the form of a false prophet, a false spirit, to reinforce the lies the person insists are truth (See also 1 Kin. 22:20-23).

The New Testament confirms this, saying, "" They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion so that they will believe the lie and so that all will be condemned who have not believed the truth but have delighted in wickedness" (2 Thes. 2:10-12).

Such a judgment should frighten us to their knees.  If it doesn't, we should then read the words of Paul who speaks of this "wrath of abandonment" as a result of mankind's wickedness.

Paul gives a list of what mankind can expect when God withdraws His hand in His wrath, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another.They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator...since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done.They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips,slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents;they are senseless, faithless, heartless, ruthless" (Rom. 1:24-25, 28-31).

Sound familiar?  This is what we can expect of those left to their own devices when God abandons them in His wrath.

With no Spirit to guide them, to keep their fleshly desires in check, mankind can do much worse to itself than any natural disaster we see on the news tomorrow.

We must repent, turn away from our iniquity and beg God's continued hand of mercy on our lives.