When We Can't Wait: Sarai's Plan and God's Seeing
Ten years since the promise. Sarai could no longer bear the distance between what God had said and what she could see. So she made a plan. But it was Hagar who ran into the wilderness, and it was there that God whispered a name: Ishmael. God hears.
You told yourself it wasn't impatience. It was being responsible. It was wisdom. It was simply time. So you sent the message you'd rewritten five times, or said yes to something you had no peace about, or arranged the thing you could no longer bear to leave unarranged. The waiting had become unbearable, and waiting felt like failing. So you acted.
Sarai had a plan too. It was culturally reasonable. It was practically sensible. And it made everything worse. Genesis 16 is a story about what happens when we can no longer stand the distance between what God has promised and what we can actually see. But it is also, surprisingly, a story about what God does next, not for the one who made the plan, but for the one who got caught in it.
Take a moment to read Genesis 16:1-15. Read it on Bible Gateway if you'd like.