Genesis 16: Faith Is Born In Chaos‪!‬ The Divine Obsession

For all my life I have heard that Abram is the father of faith. I know that’s because of what he did when he was asked to sacrifice his only son, Isaac. It is a great example of trust in God. I have said earlier that I don’t have that kind of faith. I wish I did.



However, when I reflected further, I wondered what happened to Abram and Sarai? God had promised them that He will multiply them and make them a great nation. His descendants will be like the stars in the sky. As smart and intelligent people, to know Sarai in her old age could get pregnant, was hard to believe. But then, why shouldn’t they trust God?



I believe they trusted God to do his part and keep His promise. As the days passed by, they must have been totally confused and afraid. As much as they wanted to trust God to keep the promise, they were not getting any younger to wait forever. Life was passing by and their strength to deal with life situations was diminishing.



I can only imagine the fear, sadness, humiliation and all the rest of the feelings Sarai must have gone through when she offered her servant girl to her husband. What was that for? Was it to help God to fulfill the promise? It was fear that things may not happen if they waited too long. Then there is the fear that they may not be able to conceive a child in their old age. All kinds of stressful moments crept in and made life total chaos, I am sure.



I always wondered if trusting in God is easy? I believe it might take us through a period of chaos especially if we try to help God? Can our idea of God’s plan lead us to do things that are crazy sometimes? Can God actually do things as God has promised, at least as we believe God has promised us in our prayer, without our help?



When I reflected more on these things I found the faith of Sarai and Abram was short just as much as ours. Genuine faith in God is prone to fail when we go through the chaos. Living in faith is living in chaos. Even when everything else seems to go against whatever we believe we can develop our trust in God. Chaos in life is ripe enough to give birth to the true faith.  



Abram and Sarai were going through the temptation to help God figure things out, without waiting patiently for God to do things. God’s timing sometimes is hard to understand and sometimes completely not in sync with the human clock. Our clock is limited because we only have a few years to live and we measure everything accordingly, but God’s clock infinite. There is not a sure way of explaining what God has in mind and the timing of it. Trusting God is not easy for anyone just as it was not the case for the father and mother of faith, Abram and Sarai.



But God can still act and God can still come through. The human chaos in this stressful situation was not the end of it all for God’s friend. It was made into a new beginning again.



Solution #16



Faith cannot be packaged easily in a neat little box. It lives through the chaos of life and many times faith is emboldened because of chaos. We are all better for the chaos of life because it helps us to live humbly. It makes us people who are real and down to earth. Of course, that goes only for those who are willing to accept that they have chaos in their lives. It is comforting to know the father and the mother of faith, Abram and Sarai, had enough chaos in their lives to strengthen their resolve to listen to God regardless of them.