From Genesis to Now--Seeing Through God's Eyes

Dear Christa—

It’s easy to put Abraham and Sarah on a pedestal—after all God did call Abraham to be the father of His chosen people. Yet, it was God who set them apart from others. At their core—Abraham and Sarah were regular people with whom God chose to do incredible things.

Then, on the other hand, it’s easy to criticize Abram for going to Egypt during the famine, but really now—it probably seemed like a smart thing to do at the time. I think if I’d been Sarah, it would have seemed like a good plan to me (beats starving) until he got to the part about, “Now, you’re beautiful—so really just tell them you’re my sister, or they might kill me.”

But lest we become too critical of Abram, Sarah too looked to what seemed logical at the time—the only way that it seemed to her she could bear this promised child was to give her servant Hagar to her husband. So she did.

To be honest, these two people approached life in the same way as I most readily do—by what seems logical within the time they lived. Abraham and Sarah approached the difficulties of life through their cultural lens and answers of their time. It comes far to easy for me to take action within what seems to make sense to me—in the here and now—the 21^st Century American woman.

How do I make decisions, large or small? Do I prayerfully ask God’s guidance, or do I rely mostly on what seems logical at the time? I was reminded last weekend by an interesting woman of God that I need to “look with God’s eyes.”

I wish I looked with those eyes most often.