How often do we step on a metaphorical banana skin? We think everything is going smoothly and something “trips” us up? Or we think we have the solution and it turns out not to be so? We come up against a problem and rather than face up to it, we run in the opposite direction.
At the beginning of the Bible in Genesis 16 we read about three people who make serious mistakes that could have affected them for the rest of their lives.
Abram (Abraham) and Sarai (Sarah) have been married for many many years and are now into what we would call old age. God has promised a son to Abram and Sarai and his descendents will be more numerous than the stars in the sky. But Sarai has still been unable to give Abram any children, so, in the custom of the day she gives her slave girl Hagar to Abram to see if this relationship will bring forth children.
But when Hagar becomes pregnant, Sarai is unhappy because Hagar resents Sarai, and Sarai blames Abram for her unhappiness. The problems are far from solved, in fact they seem to have multiplied!
Abram goes along with the plan and fathers a child, but refuses to try and help mend the relationship between Sarai and Hagar.
Hagar, finding herself in a tricky situation, ups sticks and runs away.
This was truly a messy situation, but God demonstrates how he can use everyone involved for good.
Sarai has taken things into her own hands, and both she and Abram have failed to trust in God to keep his promise to them, but despite this God eventually gives them the son they have so long desired.
Hagar is promised by God that she will have a son who will be the ancestor of many descendents.
No matter how much we mess up, no matter how complicated we make our lives, there is nothing that God cannot solve, if we are willing to trust him and to ask him.
Prayer: Merciful and loving Father, so often we mess up, we make problems of our own doing, we slip up on banana skins that we have thrown down. Forgive us our failings and our wrongdoings, and help us to put our trust in you, to truly believe that nothing is too big or too small, nothing is too complicated for you. Thank you. AMEN