… so she said to Abram, "The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my slave; perhaps I can build a family through her." – Genesis 16:2

Today's Scripture Reading (August 14, 2021): Genesis 16

Life is often a battle between our wants and priorities. What we want often outstrips our ability to have or purchase. As a result, we are forced to make choices. We have to decide to sacrifice something to get whatever it is that is higher on our priority list. But, unfortunately, what often happens is that we spend on small-ticket items, things that we can afford to buy now, and sacrifice things that we are going to need or want later. If we could not borrow money, few of us would ever buy a house or a new car. We just don't have the discipline to save that kind of money no matter how much we might want it. Our willingness to spend on what we want now, instead of saving for tomorrow, is also why one of our most essential investments often goes underfunded. Most of our retirement savings are seriously short of resources. We make the excuse that we won't retire, so we will never need the money, and therefore we can spend that money on an evening out or some gadget for the house. But the reality is that how long we work is not usually determined by our need for cash. More often, it is our age and health that make that decision for us. And when we grow older, we realize and wish that we had made our retirement more of a financial priority,

Sarai had a choice. She wanted to have her husband as her own, but she also wanted to give her husband a child. And that lack of a child was causing her a significant amount of pain. She felt like she had disappointed her husband. She thought that she was judged and looked down upon because she could not bear a child. She wanted to hold a baby that was her own, taken from her body. And maybe beyond all of that, she knew that God had promised Abram a child, and yet she had not gotten pregnant. It seems likely that this promise was at the heart of all of her pain; she believed that, somehow, she had disappointed God.

So, Sarai came up with a plan that she hoped would ease her personal pain. The culture allowed, under these circumstances, that Sarai could give her servant to Abram. He could sleep with her, and if a child was produced from the union, then that child could be considered Sarai's. There is no question that there was a high price to be paid here. Hagar would know Abram in a way that, up until now, only Sarai had known him. But if there were a child, maybe the pain would go away, and Sarai would find peace at last.

In "The Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg argues that Sarai's pain was deeply connected with what Sarai now felt was her guilt and her guilt alone.

As long as Abraham and Sarah dwelt outside of the Holy Land, they looked upon their childlessness as a punishment for not abiding within it. But when a ten years' sojourn in Palestine found her barren as before, Sarah perceived that the fault lay with her. Without a trace of jealousy she was ready to give her slave Hagar to Abraham as wife, first making her a freed woman. For Hagar was Sarah's property, not her husband's (Louis Ginzberg). 

But the problem was that this was Sarai's solution and not God's. And whenever we choose our solution over God's, it only increases the level of our pain.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: Genesis 17