Can you imagine going through the mood swings and hot flashes of menopause, knowing God had promised her a baby? How frustrated Sarai must have been! She still is mentioned in Hebrews 11 , the Hall of Faithful Ones. Genesis What a cat fight those two women must have had! But the results are still the same.
God did give Abram and Sarai a baby. In our world, that would be two wrinkled senior citizens becoming new parents just as they qualified for Medicare.
And He keeps His promises! Though she may have previously laughed in disbelief and secrecy, now Sarah laughed with joy and wanted her situation to be known: God had been faithful to His promise and blessed her. My first little girl died a long, agonizing death.
The docs told me it would be risky to try to have another child. We even had holy puppies! Goody Goodness and Surely Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life. One test still remained for the couple. Abraham was willing to give up his son, trusting that God would somehow still remain true to His promise Genesis 22 ; Hebrews — God only gave a few sacramental names-names that were given in association with His covenant declaration.
God re-named Abram. Paul writes that Abraham and Sarah began a lineage that continued through all who believe in Jesus, the Messiah:. Let us know. Episode E. Lockhart's New Jewish Superhero. Frymer-Kensky, Tikva. Jewish Women's Archive. Learn more. In Brief. Enslavement in Egypt and Bareness. Birth of Isaac. Bledstein, Adrien J. More Like This See Also:.
See Also:. From the Blog:. Donate Help us elevate the voices of Jewish women. Listen to Our Podcast. Book Club. And you are her children, if you do good and do not fear anything that is frightening. The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised.
By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised. Hebrews ESV. All of these verses point to the fact that Sarah was faithful and that God delivers on His promises.
More on this in the next section. Bearing at child in our elderly years? He is God of all and our Heavenly Father. He has kingdom over all. When you face a seemingly impossible situation on earth, give it to God.
He is able to more than anything we can ask or imagine. Nothing is impossible for him. God promised Abraham that he would father a nation.
When Abraham and Sarah were at a time when they should have been way past childbearing years, they must have thought that God changed His mind or forgot about them. Oh, but God! Many years after God made the promise to Abraham, He delivered! He promised that He would fight for us:. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. Exodus ESV. He promised to give us strength:. Isaiah ESV. He promised to be with us and to protect us:. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you.
The Bible is full of promises that God made to us and while sometimes you may not feel Him, He is there, keeping all of His promises to you. Sarah prayed for a baby and God made a covenant with Abraham to bless them with a child, but years went on and still Sarah was barren. In their golden years, God gave Sarah a baby.
Seven years later, God blessed me with Mike. God knew what He was doing. It was all in His perfect timing. I had to go through the twists and turns in life to be at a place in my life to meet Mike. God always answers, but in His perfect timing and not ours. For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
We cannot begin to fathom how and why God does things or when He does things, but we can rest in knowing that His timing is always perfect. Sarah is a beautiful example of practicing patience in what must have been an extremely difficult and painful time in her life.
Be still before the Lord and wait patiently for him;. Psalm a ESV. When I want something, I knuckle down and work hard to get it.
Some things, however, are out of my control. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Galatians ESV. Early in my first marriage, I was told that I had a number of gynecological issues and that the longer I waited to conceive, the harder it would be for me to get pregnant. I was convinced that God was punishing me for all the bad I had done in my life.
At the time, although I was a member of the Catholic church, I was not saved. My doctor prescribed a fertility drug and told me to start taking it on the Sunday following my next period.
I never did get my period. I was already pregnant. Although my infertility did not last as long as some women have endured, I understand the desperation. I understand the deep longing for a child and how it hurts when you are trying for a baby and hear of others announcing their pregnancies.
Archaeological evidence shows that both Ur and Haran, the cities from which Sarah and Abraham emigrated, were centers of goddess worship; pictures of Mesopotamian goddesses appear on pottery plaques unearthed from both areas.
Once Sarah arrives in Canaan, argues Teubal, she struggles to preserve the matriarchal traditions of her homeland against the patriarchal society in Canaan. The Genesis narratives thus form a bridge between the matriarchal pre-historic world and the patriarchal historic world.
Teubal draws on historical evidence from the ancient Near East to prove that, in the Hagar story, Sarah asserts her traditional role as priestess. If a man has married a priestess [of a certain rank] and she has given a slave girl to her husband and she bears sons, if thereafter that slave girl goes about making herself equal to her mistress, because she had borne sons, her mistress may not sell her; she may put the mark of a slave on her and count her with the slave girls.
If she has not borne sons, her mistress may sell her. In treating Hagar as she does, Sarah asserts the authority granted to her as priestess by the legal code of her homeland. Sarah takes her maid and gives her as a concubine to her husband. Although Teubal cites an impressive array of circumstantial evidence for her theory that Sarah is a Mesopotamian priestess, there is no direct evidence in the biblical text.
She argues that written records from the beginning of writing in ancient Sumer show that patriarchy was well-entrenched in the ancient Near East over years before the Bible; the Genesis narratives are not a bridge between some matriarchal pre-history and patriarchal history.
0コメント