Day 16- Genesis 21

God is faithful to his promises.
A year after God appeared to Abram and changed his and Sarai's names to Abraham and Sarah, Sarah becomes pregnant. Abraham is 100 and Sarah is 90.

At this point, Ishmael, the boy born to Sarah's slave girl when Sarah and Abraham tried to take the matter into their own hands, is 14 years old.   Since he is the firstborn, he seems like a threat beside Sarah's vulnerable newborn baby.  So Sarah demands that Abraham sends Hagar and Ishmael away.
Sarah's name really seems to suit her.  She acts so selfishly throughout Genesis.  First, she forces Abraham to have sex with Hagar.  (Hagar was a princess of Egypt, so what a lifestyle change! To become a slave who is treated like that?)
Then, when Hagar accomplishes what Sarah wanted, Sarah hates her.  Hagar runs away, God told her to return, and now here she is, being sent away into the desert with her son. Basically to their death.
At least Abraham cared.  God told him to send her off, but that he would "Make the son of the maidservant into a nation also because he (was his) offspring." vs 13

It relieves me to see that God is just. (I should know this already, right?)
 When I look at Hagar's life, it seems unfair. She was a princess in a strong and powerful nation.  Her father gave her to a foreign woman as a slave. She was treated pretty fairly until Sarah got that notion of getting Hagar pregnant.  Culturally, because Hagar was her property, it would be as if Abraham had gotten Sarah pregnant.  But how weird is that?! Hagar was definitely not on board, because when she finds out she is pregnant, she despises Sarah.  Now after all of that, Sarah decides to dispose of them.  Seemingly, God is on board with that. However, we know that when he says he will take care of Hagar and Ishmael, that it will be done.
Ishmael's descendants do become a nation. His descendants today make up the Arab nations which struggle with the Israelites over control of Abraham's tomb.  They both claim to be descendants of Abraham, and they both are.

This is a reminder to me that I need to trust that God knows what he is doing.  If he promises that he will do something, he will.  Not in our time, or in our ways, but in his time and in his ways. "'For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.'declares the LORD." Isaiah 55:8
It is really easy to get a mindset that we can do things on our own.  Culturally, that is what is exalted- independence and self-gain. We can only accomplish so much on our own, but "nothing is impossible with God." Luke 1:37

May we be independently dependent on God.