… and she said to Abraham, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son, for that slave woman’s son will never share in the inheritance with my son Isaac.” – Genesis 21:10

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 10, 2012): Genesis 21

Gifts are strange things. Throughout my childhood I always looked forward to gift times like Christmas or my birthday, but there was always part of me that really didn’t want the day to come. The problem was that often the anticipation of the gifts exceeded the reality – even when I received exactly what I wanted.

Life seems to be like that. Often we seem to want something, but when we actually get it - it doesn’t measure up to what we thought it would be. Sometimes it is just better to live with the anticipation of what might be, than it is to live in the reality of what really is.

And that is exactly the place that Sarah finds herself. It wasn’t that long ago that Sarah sent her servant in to sleep with her husband, Abraham. The custom was that any child that was born to her servant would be hers. Besides, the promise that God had made to Abraham was that he would be the father of many peoples. And so far, Sarah felt that she was letting God down – after all, she hadn’t been able to provide Abraham with even one descendant.

So her idea was Hagar. And in the beginning it had been a good idea. Hagar would give Abraham the son that God said he would have. But not only that, Hagar would give her, Sarah,  a son. And that gift would be worth whatever the cost might be in the long run.

But all of that was before Isaac. And the birth of Isaac changed everything. What had been a good idea was now a bad one. A gift that Sarah thought at one time she had been given had now soured. The reality didn’t lead measure up to the anticipation.

Of course, the gift that Sarah thought she wanted from Hagar was not the gift that God wanted to give to her. He had something much better in mind – something that Sarah couldn’t even imagine. And if she had just waited on God, things would have been much simpler.

And that is the way it is for us as well. The things that God has for us are always better than any gift we could dream up for ourselves.

    

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Genesis 22