Whose side was God on?
Abraham had a problem. His first wife demanded that he send away his second wife. Sarah, the first wife had given her maid Hagar to Abraham, and he had taken Hagar to be his wife, Sarah now refers to her as ‘this slave’. Not only does she want to send away the slave-wife, she also wants to send away Abraham’s first born son, Ishmael, the child he had with Hagar, at one time Sarah had wanted to make Hagar's baby her own, now she wants him sent away. Ishmael was fourteen and had been mocking his baby step-brother. Sarah gave as her reason for asking that he be sent away that there would be conflict over inheritance. That might be a reasonable fear, fratricide was fairly common where inheritances were involved.
Three persons were involved in this problem: Abraham was the person with power, Sarah was the person with position, Hagar was the person with nothing (except an unwanted son and a history of making trouble). In the problem situations you have dealt with or are still dealing with, which person do you identify with? Whose situation is most like your own situation? Abraham had made a great feast to coincide with the weaning of Isaac; baby’s were nursed a lot longer than nine month so Ishmael who was 14 when the baby was born may have been 15 or 16. The feast should have been a time of joy and celebration, instead Abraham began to grieve because of the trouble between his two wives. It still happens today; family celebrations are outwardly happy but there is often a secret weeper and sometimes a quarrel erupts that makes all the members of the family sad for many years.
Whose side was God on? That question is too simple Here we have three people, all with some degree of trust in God; would God be siding with one person against another? The language of the Bible is that God is ‘for’ those who trust him. That includes all three people.
In my branch of the Universal Church we often encounter problem situations; when we do, we remind each other to approach cautiously and not to react in anger or haste. Caution is needed because it is important to fully understand the problem before applying a hasty solution. All the involved parties come together, to talk honestly and to think and to wait for insight. At times like this when the ‘for’ and ‘against’ parties come in humility and honesty and recognize that they need more wisdom than they have, I feel as though I am watching a miracle. Of course in any democracy the people who are ‘for’ and the people who are ‘against’ meet together peaceably and sometimes with honesty and humility – that doesn’t make it any less of a miracle.
I want to ask you, which causes the most problems? Is it the original action (the one that caused the problem in the first place) or the reaction to the problem? A wrong solution often produces more damage than the original problem. Even in a family row where only words are used, violent speech is responded to with more violent speech and the conflict soon tears apart the threads that bind families and friends together.
“It can’t come out smelling like a rose.” This was said to me when Davd and I were working with a problem in Teen Challenge, the organization that helps teen-agers come off drugs. The problem was that two teen agers who had had a baby together desperately wanted to marry and raise the baby. To do this they would need to live with the parents of one of them and get a lot of help from both families. The parents didn't want to start looking after new children before they'd got their older children through school. The boys parents didn't like the girl, and the girl's parents despised the boy. While we were struggling to get some help for the teen-agers somebody dismissed all hope with the remark that, "It can't come out smelling like a rose, because it was started wrong in the first place." Discouraged, the girl returned to her parents, the baby was given up for adoption, the boy sent to relatives in another state and both young people carried on with their education and prepared themselves for the opportunities life might present to them. Since then I have discovered that even the toughest problems can come out smelling like a rose. In my congregations there have been parents and grandparents who have sacrificed time and money to help young couples marry or to help single mothers raise children, The young parents learn (eventually) to be grateful for the help they receive, the children grow up with a host of relatives and become delightful people. Teen marriage can last: among the ladies of my church women’s fellowships there weree a number of women who had been married when they were sixteen or seventeen and stayed married all their lives. Grandmas look forward to living a life where they can do the things they couldn't do when they had children, but many of them willingly give up that prospect and start again to raise a family; only this time it is some one elses child. One of these grandmothers told me that there are many different problems faced by the two generation gap and the grandparents dis-similarity to younger parents. None of those women wanted to start raising a family again, but when their sons and daughters returned home with babies many of the older women made the sacrifice. I know those children, most of them grew up to become to be charming people.
People love to voice their opinion and give advice, their advice usually take the shape of offering a solution. It is always a bit of an insult because it suggests that the person with the problem isn't capable of arriving at their own solution. Sometimes we can't tell other people about our problems because shallow solutions and unhelpful advice will just make us more miserable and irritated than we already are. .
In this case Abraham received advice from a different source. God gave him some advice which surprises us and we don't very much like. Abraham however had learnt to have confidence in the voice that instructed him and he does what God directs. Early next morning he gives food and a container of water to Hagar and sends her and her son away, out into the wilderness.
Three persons were involved in this problem: Abraham was the person with power, Sarah was the person with position, Hagar was the person with nothing (except an unwanted son and a history of making trouble). In the problem situations you have dealt with or are still dealing with, which person do you identify with? Whose situation is most like your own situation? Abraham had made a great feast to coincide with the weaning of Isaac; baby’s were nursed a lot longer than nine month so Ishmael who was 14 when the baby was born may have been 15 or 16. The feast should have been a time of joy and celebration, instead Abraham began to grieve because of the trouble between his two wives. It still happens today; family celebrations are outwardly happy but there is often a secret weeper and sometimes a quarrel erupts that makes all the members of the family sad for many years.
Whose side was God on? That question is too simple Here we have three people, all with some degree of trust in God; would God be siding with one person against another? The language of the Bible is that God is ‘for’ those who trust him. That includes all three people.
In my branch of the Universal Church we often encounter problem situations; when we do, we remind each other to approach cautiously and not to react in anger or haste. Caution is needed because it is important to fully understand the problem before applying a hasty solution. All the involved parties come together, to talk honestly and to think and to wait for insight. At times like this when the ‘for’ and ‘against’ parties come in humility and honesty and recognize that they need more wisdom than they have, I feel as though I am watching a miracle. Of course in any democracy the people who are ‘for’ and the people who are ‘against’ meet together peaceably and sometimes with honesty and humility – that doesn’t make it any less of a miracle.
I want to ask you, which causes the most problems? Is it the original action (the one that caused the problem in the first place) or the reaction to the problem? A wrong solution often produces more damage than the original problem. Even in a family row where only words are used, violent speech is responded to with more violent speech and the conflict soon tears apart the threads that bind families and friends together.
“It can’t come out smelling like a rose.” This was said to me when Davd and I were working with a problem in Teen Challenge, the organization that helps teen-agers come off drugs. The problem was that two teen agers who had had a baby together desperately wanted to marry and raise the baby. To do this they would need to live with the parents of one of them and get a lot of help from both families. The parents didn't want to start looking after new children before they'd got their older children through school. The boys parents didn't like the girl, and the girl's parents despised the boy. While we were struggling to get some help for the teen-agers somebody dismissed all hope with the remark that, "It can't come out smelling like a rose, because it was started wrong in the first place." Discouraged, the girl returned to her parents, the baby was given up for adoption, the boy sent to relatives in another state and both young people carried on with their education and prepared themselves for the opportunities life might present to them. Since then I have discovered that even the toughest problems can come out smelling like a rose. In my congregations there have been parents and grandparents who have sacrificed time and money to help young couples marry or to help single mothers raise children, The young parents learn (eventually) to be grateful for the help they receive, the children grow up with a host of relatives and become delightful people. Teen marriage can last: among the ladies of my church women’s fellowships there weree a number of women who had been married when they were sixteen or seventeen and stayed married all their lives. Grandmas look forward to living a life where they can do the things they couldn't do when they had children, but many of them willingly give up that prospect and start again to raise a family; only this time it is some one elses child. One of these grandmothers told me that there are many different problems faced by the two generation gap and the grandparents dis-similarity to younger parents. None of those women wanted to start raising a family again, but when their sons and daughters returned home with babies many of the older women made the sacrifice. I know those children, most of them grew up to become to be charming people.
People love to voice their opinion and give advice, their advice usually take the shape of offering a solution. It is always a bit of an insult because it suggests that the person with the problem isn't capable of arriving at their own solution. Sometimes we can't tell other people about our problems because shallow solutions and unhelpful advice will just make us more miserable and irritated than we already are. .
In this case Abraham received advice from a different source. God gave him some advice which surprises us and we don't very much like. Abraham however had learnt to have confidence in the voice that instructed him and he does what God directs. Early next morning he gives food and a container of water to Hagar and sends her and her son away, out into the wilderness.
posted by Jessie Coates at 10:51 PM
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