Genesis 21: Part One, verses 1-10
When I was little and we were late leaving for someplace, five children and my mom already in the car and waiting for Dad, I remember my mom muttering not quite under her breath, “That man is slower than God.”
Sometimes waiting for God to reveal something, or answer something, or keep some promise can seem like a lifetime. For Abraham and Sarah, the first real fruit of God’s promises did almost take a lifetime. Finally though, Isaac is born, and just as the psalmist will later write, “Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30) Finally Sarah is laughing not with skepticism but with joy, deep and grateful and powerful joy.
I imagine that she must have fed off of that joy for quite some time. I bet that she was kind to the neighbors, forgiving to her husband, that she hummed while she worked on most days. I wonder if she wasn’t even friendly with Hagar, that other woman who had given birth to her husband’s other son. When we are feeling blessed and our joy overflows, we can be lavish with life, with our attention and forbearance and acceptance. We can afford to be generous, for we are ever so aware of all we have been given and absolutely every good thing seems possible.
But this doesn’t last forever. No, in my experience it never does. I have never been able to hold onto this joy, this abundant love and lavish grace for long enough. God does something marvelous, and I know myself to be beloved of the Holy One, and something opens up in me so that I am able to be free and whole and generous. And then, the luster of it all wears off, I guess. The everyday reasserts itself, and I fail to notice the blessings inherent in the everyday. There is no longer enough love in me to go around, it seems. I close up and hoard again, need to guard what “little” I have.
This seems to me to be what happens to Sarah. Isaac is weaned. Her baby, the only baby she will ever have, is grown into a child. Life must seem to be rushing by so fast. “Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac.” Suddenly there is not enough to go around, and she says to her husband, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” There are not enough goats or sheep or tents or valuables to trade. There is not, I suspect, in her eyes, enough love. What was lavish is now not good enough. Someone must be hurt.
We all know this drama. We’ve lived it. Sometimes we’ve been Sarah, and sometimes we’ve been Hagar. What do you think it will take for us to spend more time in the lavish places, to be more aware in every moment of the abundant and steadfast love of the One who made us and who made that other, of the One who adores us and also adores that other? Why won’t we believe that there is enough of the good stuff, enough of the love, to go around?
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It's like trying to explain love to a little child whose parents have brought home baby #2. Will there be enough love?? Human love is like a glowing candle. Take it and light a second candle and there is still the flame on the first. If human love can be like this, how much of a conflagration must God's love be! I think the problem often is that we don't see ourselves as loveable and when we snuff out the confidence God loves us as we are, we find it hard to love others. We get Grinchy, tight-fisted and hard-hearted, somehow oblivious to the fact that the more love we spread (the more candles we light), the more we can understand that we, too, are loved.
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