Rhonda's Ramblings

I am trying to be consistent about reading the Bible daily by following the daily readings in my Daily Walk Bible. This particular Bible starts in Genesis and reads straight through, ending the year in Revelations. Last week I was reading about Sarai and Abram (before God changed their names to Sarah and Abraham) in Genesis 16, where Abram sleeps with Hagar to conceive a child since Sarah is barren. I love how when I read Scripture multiple times I notice more than just the story being told. Now I have read this passage several times, but it has always been about Abram conceiving a child through Hagar and the result of that. This time as I read this story my focus was on Sarai. She is soooo human in this passage. You see, it was her idea to give Hagar to Abram. In the passages just before this, God told Abram that he would have descendants, and Sarah, who has no children and can't seem to have children, gets busy troubleshooting the problem she perceives. I love this because this is so how I respond to God sometimes. God says, "This is what I am going to do" and I get busy trying to figure out how to accomplish that. DUH!!! God says HE is going to do it through me - not that He wants me to figure out how to accomplish his plan. But read on in the passage. When things don't exactly go the way Sarai thought they would and Hagar starts mistreating her, she blames Abram. In the NLT she says, "The Lord will make you pay for doing this to me." WHAT??? It was her idea, but when things went wrong it was his fault? See what I mean? SOOOOO human. Maybe she was PMSing (even though she was probably post-menopausal)? Here is what I love about God in all of this... He doesn't hold Sarai's stupid mistakes against her. In Isaiah 51 she is listed as one to look at as an example if you are pursuing righteousness and seeking God; in 1 Peter 3 she is listed as an example of a good wife; AND she is included in the list of faithful in Hebrews 11 - for being able to have a child because she trusted God would keep his promise - exactly what she was initially struggling with in Genesis 16.