Since I was little, I’ve always been a person who airs on the side of caution. I was the kid who would talk to adults at the playground and leave the conversation being told I had an “old soul” (whatever that meant as an eight-year-old). So when the adults around me would roll their eyes about their children wanting to become singers or astronauts, I told myself I would be different. I would not be the kid who hoped and dreamed; I would be the kid who listened to everyone older and wiser and instead followed the safest and most secure path in life possible.
In this pragmatic and logical approach to life, I chose anything and everything considered “realistic,” which led to me living a very black-and-white life. I wanted little to no gray. Gray was scary, uncertain, and fluid. You can’t control gray. I didn’t want to have hope in the gray because black and white seemingly kept me safe.
But the more I read Scripture, the more I noticed that God operated in the gray. He was not confined to the limits of humanity. We see evidence of this through the story of Sarah.
Sarah was a hero of faith (Hebrews 11:11-12). When we think of what it means to be a “hero of faith,” we most likely assume it means someone rich, famous, or successful who made some grandiose gesture or move in history for the glory of God. But the more we read Scripture and find patterns for the type of people God chooses, the more we stumble upon the unassuming and the unknown. More gray.
Sarai (Sarah) was unassuming and unknown. The first mention of her is in Genesis 11:29-30, where she is identified only as Abram’s wife, describing her as “childless because she was not able to conceive.”
When she was 65, God made the Abrahamic Covenant, in which He promised Abram that he would be a great nation (Genesis 12:1-3) and proclaimed that he and Sarai would be blessed with a child.
Before you keep reading, take a moment to let that settle. Sarai was already 65 years old when she was first promised a child, which was well past the childbearing age. Imagine it taking until you were 65 years old for your deepest longing to be promised to you and then having to wait even longer for it to come to pass.
Over ten years after Abram received this covenant from God, Sarai decided to take matters into her own hands (Genesis 16).
Isn’t it interesting that instead of God’s promise instilling confidence in Sarai, she almost became more impatient than before she received it?
I think many of us tend to operate that way. Promises have great value, and we see that repeatedly in Scripture. It’s not wrong to want to hold someone to their word. But it’s interesting to note that once we are promised something—once we are told something will happen—the desire grows exponentially bigger; thus, the desire to try to control things becomes greater.
For Sarai, the promise may have felt worse than the initial uncertainty. It gave her the danger of hope for the impossible. But hope only feels dangerous if we don’t have faith.
In her impatience, Sarai forgot the covenant God had given her and Abram—one that only He could fulfill. She knew she was too old to bear a child in her own power, so she made her Egyptian slave and personal handmaiden, Hagar, conceive a child with her husband on her behalf. But this child wouldn’t have her DNA. God had promised her something greater—and she forsook it.
Many of us know how Sarah’s story ends. In Genesis 18, at the age of 90, 25 years after first receiving the promise, she gave birth to her very own son, Isaac. God was faithful.
So why was Sarah considered a hero of faith if she seemingly hadn’t trusted God?
And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise.
Hebrews 11:11
It was because of her faith that she had Isaac. God opened her womb to bear children because she considered Him faithful, even though she was well past the age it should have been possible.
Now, put yourself in her shoes, and think of the faith it must have taken to believe that God would give you something so ludicrous, so unimaginable, as having a child at 90 years of age. Yet, in the end, Sarah had believed God’s promise to her. She denied her earthly understanding of what was possible, ultimately trusting God’s sovereignty and provision for her life.
One moment of weakness did not have the power to discount decades of living a faith-filled life, in which she and Abram would uproot their entire lives to follow God wherever He was leading them.
God knows that we are limited in our beliefs, but that doesn’t stop Him from challenging us to believe Him anyway, as He did with Sarah. That’s the tension we wrestle with—looking past our experiences and knowledge and trusting that our limitations don’t confine Him. He lives in the gray.
I’m thankful for the words of Ephesians 3:20 when I grossly underestimate God, “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever!”
Though my natural tendency is to air on the side of caution in life—stories like Sarah’s have helped me to slowly loosen the grip of control I think I have and, instead, lift my hands in worship.
I never had dreams of being a singer or an astronaut, but I’ve longed to be a writer since I was in the fourth grade, when I used to have writing competitions with my best friend, Kendall.
Though I set my sights on journalism in high school after years of investing in our newspaper and yearbook, I was told that print journalism was dying and an English degree wasn’t useful. So, by the time I got to college, I had already explored other options and ended up choosing a career path that was practical, sensible, and had great prospects. But God. In His way, in His timing, and in His provision for my life, I would one day become an editor for a faith-based platform created to glorify His name and equip the saints. For me, a career in writing and editing was immeasurably more than I could have asked or imagined, and yet here I am.
God planted seeds of a dream in my heart when I was nine years old that wouldn’t start growing until I was 26 years old.
If He can part the Red Sea, provide abundance out of two loaves and five fish, make a blind man see again, and provide a child to a barren woman at 65, I can’t help but fall on my face in worship in response—believing Him for more when faced with the seemingly impossible.
Scripture References
