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
get rid of him, but the young man he witnessed to became a Christian. His name was
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the most famous Russian Christian of modern times. Kornfeld
only lived long enough as a Christian to win one man to Christ. What a tragedy, some
might say, if all they knew was human math. But a victorious life was his if you know
God's math where one is enough to make a world of difference. MacLeish wrote, "We
are neither weak nor few as long as one man does what one can do." Or, one mother, as
was the case with Sarah and Hagar, and a host of other mothers through history.
Sarah became the mother of Isaac, and Hagar became the mother of Ishmael. These
two sons became the fathers of the Jews and Arabs, who get on the front page of the
newspapers frequently because they continue to carry on the feud that started with their
ancestral mothers. Males are usually the war makers of history, but the battles of the
Jews and Arabs all started with mothers. Father Abraham loved both of his boys, but
their mothers basically hated each other. They were both good mothers, and God loved
and cared for both of them. But the Bible reveals that they were very human and had
their problems with sinful attitudes.
It is good that the Bible tells us about the sins of mothers so that we keep a balance
and avoid idolatry. Much of the preaching on Mother's Day, and much of the poetry
written about mothers portrays them as paragons of virtue and ready at any time to step
in and take the place of any Seraphim that might have to leave the throne of God. The
Bible keeps us realistic by telling it like it is, and by showing us that mothers struggle with
envy, jealously, fear, and all sorts of negative emotions. We see Sarah so filled with fear
that Hagar's boy will interfere with her boy's inheritance that she demands they be cast
out of the family. There is no need to assume she knew this would lead to their death in
the desert, but accept for the grace of God that is exactly what would have happened.
Mother's Against Drunk Drivers is an organization I support, but I don't think I
would be interested in a group called Mother's Against Other Mothers Whose Kids They
Think Are Brats. This would, no doubt, be a sizable group. Sarah felt that Hagar's son
was a brat and a threat, and so she had them sent out of their household. Sarah had only
one child. If she had other children she would have soon learned that her own kids could
be brats as well. She would have had to struggle then with whether or not to banish her
own child. She lacked this experience that any mother of more than one understands,
and so she had Hagar and Ishmael banished.
Poor Hagar found herself wandering in the desert with her water supply exhausted.
She was just waiting for her son to die of dehydration. It is one of life's heaviest burdens
to be a mother of a very sick and dying child. Nobody prays more than a mother
watching her child suffer. Hagar put Ishmael under a bush and went off to let the tears
of despair flow. Ishmael was also crying, and verse 17 says that God heard the boy
crying. It is as if to say that tears are themselves a form of prayer, and God listens to
such prayers.
If anyone ever needed to be heard by God it was Hagar and Ishmael. Hagar is now a
single parent mother with no means of support. She is poor and alone, and without
resources even to keep body and soul together. She represents the homeless, the
destitute, the lonely and forsaken of the world. Without the grace of God she and her son
would have perished in the desert. But God who is pro-mother came to her rescue, and
not only spared their lives, but promised Hagar that He would make her son into a great
nation. Here was a mother who was taken from the pit of despair and put on the solid
rock of security by the promise of God.
Everything she did for her son now had meaning and purpose, for poor and homeless
as they were, they were destined by God for greatness. God opened her eyes to see the
well He provided, and she took water to Ishmael and raised him in the desert as a single
mom. She got him a wife as soon as he was of age, for she had the promise of God that he
would have a vast offspring. She became an optimistic mother because of God's rescuing
them from a hopeless situation, and because of his promise. Not all mothers have such a
promise from God, but the fact is, every mother plays a major role in their child's future
by her attitude.
Jacky Hertz, mother of 13 children, in her book The Christian Mother writes, "The
mothers approach to her children makes all the difference in the world in how they
behave. If you begin the morning by telling the kids how naughty they are, within the
hour you will have mother-produced fireworks, liter and mayhem." Mothers need to be
optimistic, and they need to make sure their children feel good about themselves, their
value, and their role in life. Hagar could do this for Ishmael because she knew God was
going to make a great nation of him. But every child needs a mother who makes them
feel they are important and secure. I do not know how Hagar did it with her level of
poverty, but we do have records of how some other poor mothers gave their children this
sense of security.
Katheryn Forbes had a TV program called I Remember Mama. This
Swedish-American family of 5 were very poor, and yet they felt secure. Each Saturday
night mama would stack the coins needed to pay the landlord, the grocer, and other bills.
Then she would smile and say, "Is good, we do not have to go to the bank." Year after
year they made it always secure in the thought they could always go to the bank. It was
not until Katheryn grew up and sold her first story that she discovered the truth. She
took her check to mama and asked her to put it in the bank account, and that is when her
mother told her there was never an account. She did it just to give her children a sense
of security so they would not be afraid of being poor.
Catherine Marshall in her book Meeting God At Every Turn tells of how her mother
did this for them. They were very poor, but never knew it. Her mother would make
fried mush often and keep part of it separate so that after they ate they would go and give
it to other poor people. They never felt poor, for they were taught to share with the poor
whatever they had.
The point is, a good mother has to give her children a sense of security. No matter
how hard their own life is, this is a mother's job. Hagar had a very tough life. If you
think life is unfair, look at the life of Hagar. She is a slave girl away from her own people.
She is used as a baby maker because Sarah wanted a child by any means, and so she is
forced to become pregnant. Then she is hated for being pregnant. Gen. 16 tells us that
Sarah mistreated Hagar and she ran away. God persuaded her to go back, but then her
son was later hated also, and they became outcasts. This is not exactly the life anyone
would choose. How can a mother survive the road she had to travel?
Gen. 16:13 gives us the answer. Hagar responds to God who comes to her as the
Angel of the Lord. "She gave this name to the Lord who spoke to her: You are the God
who sees me, for she said, I have now seen the One who sees me." Hagar is one of the
rare persons in history that is permitted to give God a name. She calls him the God who
sees me. In other words, the comfort and encouragement she received just by knowing
that God knew her and her situation gave her the strength and the courage to live her
unfair life quite well. If you are going to be a source of comfort and security to your
children, you need such a Source yourself, and Hagar had her Source in God-the God
who sees her.
Hagar only got one break in life, and that was that God cared about her. He did not
make her life easy, and spare her from its hardships, but he assured her that he was
watching. She was not living her hard life in isolation with nobody to care. God was
seeing the whole thing, and she mattered to Him. When she saw that God saw her, and
that made all the difference in the world. She was able to be a slave, a surrogate mother,
and an outcast, and still be a good mother because she had the assurance that God saw
her and cared.
To be a good mother, a good father, or a good anyone it is crucial to know that God
cares. This is the key to a meaningful life. Look at the genealogy of Jesus and you will
see 4 mothers who had a really rough life. They were all unworthy to be a part of any
plan, let alone the plan of God to save the human race. Tamar played the harlot; Rahab
was a prostitute; Ruth the Moabite was from a people despised, and was a widow, and
Bathsheba was an adulteress. All of these mothers had a tough life, and 3 of the 4 were
outright sinners violating the will of God. And yet each of them is in the bloodline to the
Messiah. This makes it clear that God not only saw Hagar, and her life as a mother, but
He sees every life and He cares. He is pro-mother even when those mothers are far from
ideal. We have the ideal mother portrayed in Proverbs 31, but none of the mothers in
the bloodline to Jesus fit that description. But God used them to make a major
difference in the history of mankind.
Mothers need to see that God sees them, and if they only have one child, and their life
is hard and unfair, and far from the ideal, they still matter to God. He can still use them
and their child for His purpose. When a mother has this sense of security they can be
channels of that security to their children. Unfortunately, there are many Christian
mothers who are more like Hagar then we realize. They feel life slaves who are living a
life that is unfair. Clyde M. Narramore gets letters like this everyday year after year:
"I have a problem and I hope you can help me. My husband and I
are both born-again Christians, and he is a leader in our church.
We have three children under four. In the last several months,
my husband has started taking his day off with other men, going
out of town, hunting and what have you. Each time he goes I have
a feeling of deep resentment, and perhaps jealously, because he can
just up and leave, while I am tied to the house and children. It doesn't
seem right.
My husband seems to think I should be content, sweet and happy just
to stay at home to cook, wash, iron, change diapers and clean house.
Almost every time he leaves, I end up crying, and when he returns it
takes a good while for us to get in harmony again. He just grins and
waits for me to get over it and tells me I'm acting foolish.
He has told me to go somewhere by myself or with someone
else if I want to, and hire a baby sitter. But I have not been
able to discover much that a woman can do without money,
of which he gives me none regularly. He has the money
budgeted, but seemingly none for extra things except the
few things he buys.
I seldom see people except church friends at services. I want
to take time off each week and go with my husband and
children somewhere. But he thinks they're too small to do
the things he is interested in. I feel so frustrated that I am
on the verge of crying half the time. Do you think my feelings
are normal and right, or should I, or must I adjust and be
happy to go on like this? I would appreciate any suggestions
you may have."
The world of motherhood is filled with the hard and the unfair, and Christian
mothers do not escape it. They need to work hard to change what is unfair, and get
fathers to share the load. But the fact is, even in the best situations the mother is going to
have the heavy end of the load when it comes to raising the children. There are
exceptions, but generally speaking, mothers bare the burden of giving their children a
sense of security. If nobody else helps, what is a mother to do? She needs to see the God
who sees her, and who cares for her. She needs to see the God who knows it is not fair,
and who knows it is hard, and the God who can use her and her children, even though
they are far from the ideal.
Hagar never could have made it without the God who sees her. Every mother needs
the same assurance, even if their life is no where near as hard as hers. Even when life is
good and we get a fair shake, we need to know that God sees and cares about us. The
happiest and most contented mother needs to know that God has a plan for her children.
This motivates her to want to do her best to prepare her children for whatever that plan
is. A mother's pride in her child's accomplishments is what motivates them to achieve. A
friend once came upon Robert Louis Stevenson turning over the leaves of a scrap book
with all the press notices about his books. He asked him if fame was all it was cracked up
to be. Stevenson said, "Yes, when I see it in my mother's eyes." The pride and joy of his
mother was his greatest reward.
Pleasing God is the highest goal of life, but pleasing mother has to be a close second.
Happy is the mother whose child longs to please her, and happy is the child whose mother
is pleased. And the best way to achieve this goal is to be a mother who sees that God sees
her and cares about her life and her children.
