Hagar, A Mother Sees God Series

Sarah was the oldest mother in the Bible, and likely the oldest woman to ever have a

baby. She was 90 years old when she gave birth to Isaac. This is not a record many are

striving to match or break, so it is likely to stand for all time. Abraham is the father of

Judaism, Islam and Christianity. He is the father of all who call themselves the people of

God because his wife became a mother of one son in his old age. Her one experience of

motherhood made her the most famous mother in history. A mother of an only child can

be as great or greater than a mother of a dozen.

Because of her greatness we seldom pay much attention to another mother in Sarah's

shadow. She was also the mother of an only son. Hagar is her name, but it never became

popular in our culture like the name Sarah did. Hagar was an Egyptian servant girl in

the house of Abraham and Sarah. She was a comparative nobody, but she became a

somebody that God used to change history by her motherhood. These two mothers of

only one son make it clear that God never counts one as a small number. One is enough

for God to change the course of history.

The Bible and history teach this lesson over and over again. God knew man would

not be impressed with one, and so they would not realize the significance of loving, caring

for, and teaching just one. Many a Sunday School teacher has given up because they

only had one student. They missed the message of God's Word that one is enough. Paul

preached his heart out in Athens, and Acts 17 tells us that when all was said and done

only one named woman and one named man responded to the Gospel. Paul could have

said, "I quit for the fruit is just too little." The one man who responded after all the

debate was Dionysius the Areopagite. He went on to have a great impact for Christ in

that city, and many of the pagan temples became churches, and he became the patron

saint of Athens. One is no number to belittle if you have the perspective of God.

One righteous man like Noah was all God needed to save the human race. One

faithful man like Joseph was all God needed to save Jacob and his family, and thereby the

future of the Jewish race. One courageous woman like Esther was all God needed to save

the Jewish nation. One sinless Son was all God needed to save a world of sinners for all

eternity. Study your Bible and see how often God uses a committee to achieve His

purpose in history. You will not find much at all. But study to see how often he uses one

individual, and you will have a great many notes. God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and

Jacob. He is the God of Sarah and Hagar. He is the God of individuals, and so one is

always a major number with God.

It is an old story I have heard a number of times, but it gives us an image we need to

be reminded of often. And old man was walking the beach where masses of star fish had

been stranded by a storm that washed them ashore. He was picking them up and flinging

them back into the sea. A young man asked him why he was doing it, and he explained

that they would die if left to the next day. But the young man protested that the beach

goes for miles and there were millions of them. He asked, "How can you make any

difference?" The old man looked at the starfish in his hands and then threw it into the

waves saying, "It makes a big difference to that one."

By not recognizing the importance of one we let the bigness of life's problems

overwhelm us and paralyze us. We cannot see how we can make a big difference and so

we do nothing. When the fact is, all we need to do to make a difference is to focus on one.

Chuck Colson in his book Loving God tells this remarkable story of a Russian Jew

named Boris Kornfeld. He was a doctor in the Gulag caring for the sick prisoners. An

unknown Christian told him about Jesus and he believed and became a committed

Christian in a Communist system. He stopped cooperating with the ruthless system that

treated prisoners like dirt. He became a nuisance to the authorities, for he reported

injustices rather than look the other way.

One of his patience was a young man recovering from cancer surgery. He told this

young man of his faith in Christ and he listened. Kornfeld was soon clubbed to death to