As I prepared to return to school, I was surprised to find my daily Bible reading focussed on the visit
of the three strangers to Abraham. Then the verse on my calendar was “And all thy children shall be
taught of the Lord; and great shall be the peace of thy children”. Now, I appreciate that the
compilers of the calendar may have realised that term starts around this time, so chose the verse
with some forethought, but the Bible notes I’m using aren’t dated – it’s a programme for reading
through the whole Bible in a year and can be started at any point.
So, I’m starting to think God is telling me something here! Obviously I hadn’t got the message by the evening, as when I attended the welcome service for Rev Abe – what was one of the key texts used by Rev Julian Pursehouse ? you’ve guessed it : Genesis 18 – he used it to illustrate hospitality, but there it was again – a
reference to new children.
And I smiled inside. Suddenly, I saw the real message for me – Sarah and I are so similar. I have
trouble believing God’s promises to me, like Sarah. I’m not patient at waiting for those promises to
be fulfilled. Sometimes I take matters into my own hands and try to help God out or speed things up
without consulting Him first. Then I don’t always admit to what I’ve done.
God hooked my interest by referring to children on a day when I was vulnerable to child friendly
references, in order to teach me more about myself. The amazing U turn with Sarah is that, although she initially appeared to lack faith in what God could do through her, later in the Bible (Hebrews 11) she is the first named woman of faith! God responds to faith even in the midst of all her other failings. I find that very humbling and encouraging.
God is not bound by what usually happens; he can stretch the limits and cause unheard-of events to
occur. It’s not easy to get my mind set round that. Sometimes I need to put laws of nature to one
side and be more open to anything…….. even peaceful children!!!!