Waiting: Highly Overrated and Largely Misunderstood

WAITING is highly over-rated!!!  You might as well know now that this post is different from the others. My views here are a bit contraversial.  Also this one flows~~~~ As more is experineced or observed, the path alters....if the topic interests you, check back occasionally - life will rewrite it.

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Over-rated & Misunderstood

If there is one expression, or group of generic English expressions I do not care for... they would include:

• time will tell
• just wait
• time heals all wounds
• don't push it
• good things come to those who wait...

...really?  really?! 

Time is something mankind often messes up.  It's lessons are often hard; it can infect rather than heal; good things do not always come to those who wait...especially if they have waited until they are worn out...as we shall see.  

Take me for an example (as I don't expose others on my blog), I waited 16 years for a baby, but none came, and my husband died. 

So, I am driven to the Word of God to find answers, to find reason, to find the path to trust, but I find more questions.  Let's look at Hannah, awaiting a child, within the realm of possibilities too - as she was a married woman and seeking this gift from the hands of God.  Or, Sarah, Abraham's love object.  I identify with her because she is old...as I am becoming.  And here is what I understand because I've studied the Word and because I, too, am woman.

First, I do not recall anywhere in scripture that Sarah was ever promised a child...I believe she simply sought what all women sought and expected from life with a husband.  The promises were always to Abraham and somewhat general "like the sands on the sea shore."  While, had I been in Sarah's place, I would certainly have stood in awe before God's promise (and BTW, we don't know if Abraham shared this with Sarah!), I don't see the 'sand simile' being as warm and cozy as the dream of an infant, all-baby-powder-smelling-and-squirmy-in-my-arms, would have been.  But God was speaking to man about much more than a baby.  The specific promise which Sarah heard from her tent (only Abraham actually stood face to face with the visitors), was fulfilled in a short time period.  This time period IS SIGNIFICANT! Sarah did NOT WAIT from her youth until she was 90 to receive God's wonderful promised child...at about 89, she conceived and bore the child in 9 months like all women.  The promise had always been made to Abraham, and he did wait a long time...I believe from about age 65.  So, let's debunk the 'patience' element in Sarah's life.  For her it was one of life's great losses, and humiliations, to have no child by a husband, and he being of great stature.  Praise God he did not linger in fulfilling the promise, once He made it audible and specific.  [Also, we know that Sarah previously made a choice in giving her handmaid to Abraham, which did not exactly bring her peace.  Thoughts on that point are coming.]

I have VERY REAL, VERY FEMININE, VERY UNDERSTANDABLY HUMAN feelings and understanding about this story...which I've not heard expressed by others.           

Let's stop here to record the facts; the outline of events leading to a long-sought pregnacy:

• Genesis 10:29-30  Abram and Nahor took wives, and we are introduced to Sarai's importance in the story by these words...."But Sarai was barren; she had no child."  Welcome to the public arena of Bible study, Sarai!
• Genesis 12:1-2  "Now the Lord said unto Abram...I will make of thee a great nation..."
• Genesis 12:7  "And the Lord appeard unto Abram, and said, Unto thy seed will I give this land....
• [Now, many years pass, as well as a LOT of history!]
• God and Abram talk a lot about the fortunes of the house of Abram and promises are made...but seemingly not kept.  There is never a mention that God talked directly to Sarai.
• Sarai waits...Finally, Sarai does what any decent wife would likely do...I can hear her brain working now.."How long can I stand in the way of the fulfillment of a promise to my husband by his God?!"  And she gives her handmaiden to Abraham.  (I understand this was common)
• Now this is where I part with all the preachers, Sunday school teachers, and selfish men I know who excuse man's tendency to take sex as though they deserve it. ABRAHAM DID NOT HAVE TO SLEEP WITH THAT WOMAN!  He couldn't turn down this temptation.  I hope you get what I'm saying...it was not Sarai who messed up - IT WAS ABRAHAM WHO MESSED UP!  Do we see any recordings that Abram ever talked with his wife about God's conversations with him?  Do we know ALL God said to Abram about this matter?  Do we see the loving compassion of a husband to a woman scorned by barreness?  NO, we see the same selfish man who risked his wife's purity to save his neck back at Pharaoh's house!  Though I don't know the conversation's fullness each time God repeated his promise of decendents to Abrham, I feel compelled to let God be responsible for the possible lack of straightforwardness...as often we see that God was a communicator of few words and fewer answers.  'Just trust' was God's mantra.
• Back to the story's point here:  It was Sarah trying to walk in faith; offering an impossible unselfishness; paying the heavy-hearted pain of knowing her man was with another woman.  The implications of life lessons from this story are endless...and painful.

And along comes baby.... 

• Finally, in chapter 18, God comes again to Abraham and extends again the promise of a child.  And Sarah laughs...who's wouldn't? 

It is hardly a  mystery to me how happy, but 

flustered Sarah may have been, when finally, this 'miracle' of old age emerged.  I can imagine her arising at night, helping her nurse feed the baby when she heard him cry...tired due to the advanced age, wishing for the more youthful years of her adult life.  And then playing on the ancient carpet with the little boy while bones and joints ached a bit from age.  Imageine, Sarah's thoughts, "O, Jehovah-God, how blessed I am!  Thank you! Thank you!"  While in her woman's heart, she wondered why her God wasted those wonderful yet awful years of youthful, fertile longing...the wonderful days when running and jumping and being up and down with a child were so viable...when the breath came easily and the strength did not wane so severely by day's end.  And the agony of knowing that the painful period with Hagar could have been avoided and the stress it caused in her marriage.  Secretly, in the very private places in her heart, she must have longed to have had her desire for a child fulfilled in the time, designated by God Himself, as the child-bearing years of woman.  Why does God design us one way and use us another?  I can't believe Sarah would not be intelligent enough to have these thoughts and questions.  But it is in this location of time and circumstance, when the mind of a woman reasons....outside the God-box of her faith...She must do something!  And Sarai had.  Pain had come and gone. Abram had passed the buck.  But Sarai survived.

God's ways are beyond ours and his 'ways' with Sarah fascinate me and sometime frighten me.  Where will this story go?  What will be revealed to me from God's heart to mine?   I hope words are given to me for sharing.  I sense it will be very significant...and uplifting as I believe God loves his daughters, young and old, with a Father's love that protects and guides.

Time was never the story here...faith was.  It is not respect for the 'magic' of time that holds us back...awaiting our Lord's actions...it is faith.  It isn't parade time that keeps us on the watch towers of life watching with our Lord...it is faith that makes the significant things come to those in his presence.  

Faith, not time, the healer.  Faith, not time, the guide.  Faith, not time, ushers in the best; the good things, and sometimes the hard things of eternal significance.

I believe there is more to every story God tells than the obvious...the convenient...the heart-warming.  We must find them and chew on them and allow their significance to become who we are.   

More, where this came from.....

(1/6/16)

Well, here it is February 19th and I've been listening to some other folks discuss the stories of Abraham and Sarah...and wondering about why God waits so long to fulfill His promises.  Right now, I have only one thought that continues to be my absolute stand on the issue of Hagar....

Abraham did not have to sleep with that woman!

(2/19/16)

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