As we follow the adventures of Abram into Genesis 16, he’s had all those promises of becoming a nation and inheriting the land – promises that God guaranteed without Abram’s help. There is a problem, however. Abram and Sarai (their names get changed to Abraham and Sarah in Genesis 17) don’t have any children.

No problem, right? God said he would do it, and he’ll do it. All we have to do is wait. Nope. Sarai gets the bright idea that they need to help God out:

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. She had a female Egyptian servant whose name was Hagar. And Sarai said to Abram, “Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her servant, and gave her to Abram her husband as a wife. And he went in to Hagar, and she conceived… (Genesis 16.1 – 4, ESV)

And, incredibly, God promises to bless Hagar’s offspring also:

The angel of the LORD also said to her, “I will surely multiply your offspring so that they cannot be numbered for multitude.” And the angel of the LORD said to her, “Behold, you are pregnant and shall bear a son. You shall call his name Ishmael, because the LORD has listened to your affliction. He shall be a wild donkey of a man, his hand against everyone and everyone’s hand against him, and he shall dwell over against all his kinsmen.” (Genesis 16.10 – 12, ESV)

Genesis is the book of beginnings, and here is the beginning of the Arab nations, many of whom are doing very well (witness the World Cup’s being played in Qatar last month). So there is blessing, as God promised, but there are also centuries of conflict, political and religious. And this blessing includes Muslims coming to faith in Jesus in droves. This Newsweek article from 2019 captures some of it.

I have no conclusions. I’m just making observations. It certainly appears that Abram and Sarai were wrong to try to help God out, but God has woven even that indiscretion into the tapestry of God’s story. And I guess one lesson is, always do the next right thing, which includes loving ALL of our neighbors: Jews, Arabs, whomever.

But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead,… (Philippians 3.13, ESV)

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22.34 – 39, ESV)