Good evening. My name is Sarah, and I'm Noah's great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter [8 greats] and I'm married to Abraham. I came to talk to you because there's no better story than mine to show what a terrific adventure following God can be. Mind you, when it all began, I didn't have the slightest idea where we were going to end up; but then, I suppose no one ever does.
My name was Sarai when I was younger. It means "my princess" and I expect I was rather spoiled. I was awfully pretty, and dozens of young men went to my father to ask for my hand in marriage. I expected to marry the handsomest and richest and kindest one of all, and we'd live in a big house in Ur and I'd have ten beautiful and well-behaved children, and wear expensive clothes made of silk from Cathay and linen from Egypt and have lots and lots of friends and go to parties at the palace and spend the summer in the mountains where it's cool.
By the way - do any of you know where Ur is? How about Iraq? Well, Ur is just about where Baghdad the capital of Iraq is, only a little closer to what you call the Persian Gulf. That's where I was born, where my home was. It's an awfully nice place to live, at least it was then, and I never expected to live anywhere else. But that's not what happened. At the beginning it was just as I expected. I married the most wonderfully handsome and kind man you could possibly ask for. Abram was my hero, my half-brother (I know you all don't marry half-brothers nowadays but back then nobody thought anything of it), and he was so charming. You couldn't stay mad at him for more than half an hour no matter what he did, and he could talk you into anything. He talked me into lending him my best shawl for a fishnet, once. But then later when I cried he got me an even nicer one, so you see? He was just as nice as he was charming. He was different, too. He used to talk about things that nobody else seemed to care about, like the meaning of life, and what God was really like, and things like that. He was always my favorite, so I was really glad when Father decided that we should get married. He wasn't exactly rich when we started, but we had enough, and it didn't seem to matter very much as long as it was Abram I was marrying instead of someone I didn't know.
Well, we settled down in Ur just the way I thought we would, in one wing of the big family house. I kept expecting to get pregnant but I never did. I was pretty disappointed and so was Abram; I was sure he was going to go out and get another wife, but he didn't. I finally got up the courage to ask him about it, since most of his friends had more than one wife even if they already had children, and he said God told him to stick to just one. So you see? That was the kind of man he was. They just don't come any better. But of course without children to raise I had to figure out something to do with my life, so I set out to become the best hostess in Ur. I got so involved in giving terrific parties and trying out new fashions and recipes and so on that I never noticed how restless Abram was getting until one day he came to me in my dressing room. I listened to what he was saying with only half an ear because I was trying on some new make-up until what he was saying began to sink in.
"We're what? Abram, you're crazy. Leave Ur? Move? Why?"
"Whaddaya mean, God told you to move?"
"He just said, 'Get up and go.'"
"We need an inheritance for our children? Abram, have you noticed, we don't have any children."
"Oh - we will. Right. Abram, do you know how old I am? We've been trying for over 15 years. What makes you think things are going to change?"
"God said so. Right."
"Abram, why doesn't God tell me these things directly instead of sending me messages through you?"
"Oh, right. I never listen. Abram, that's not fair, I'm listening right now."
"Okay okay okay. Where did you say we're going?"
"You don't KNOW? We're just going to load everything we've got onto oxcarts and take off and keep walking until God says STOP? Abram, have you been drinking?"
"Abram, why don't we just take a nice vacation. We'll go up into the mountains for a month, just the two of us, and have a sort of second honeymoon. You'll forget about all this nonsense."
"They what? Our father Terah and your nephew Lot have already agreed and the servants started packing this morning?"
But he talked me around just as he always did and by the time we were all packed and ready to go I was getting kind of excited. The social round in Ur was really rather pointless and boring once you stopped to think about it. And maybe I would finally have a baby just like Abram promised me. And, if not, well - I was pretty used to doing whatever Abram said all my life and it always seemed to work out. And he really was positive that this was what God wanted him to do. And, you know, that was one of the things I liked best about Abram: he always cared more about what God wanted than what the neighbors thought.
Let me show you on the map where we went. I'd need a map three times the size of this one to show you where we started, from Ur, away off in that direction, and then we stopped at Haran, up here; it wasn’t all that much different from Ur and I really hoped that was where we were going to settle down. When I asked Abram he just snapped at me, so I could tell something was wrong. I finally figured out that he really wanted to keep going but had to wait because our father Terah couldn’t travel any more. He was sick for a long time. After he died, and the mourning period was over, though, we started off again.
We went right down into Canaan, past this big lake here that you call the Sea of Galilee, and we stopped at a place called Shechem, here, and Abram built an altar there to thank God for having brought us safely into the land. And I thought we were going to stop right there and build a house and I'd wait for our baby to be born. I wasn't pregnant yet but you know Abram had really convinced me that it was going to happen. So when God came and told Abram that this was the land he was giving us I thought, "This is it, home at last. Just in time to settle down before getting the winter wheat in." But no. Just a few days later we were on our way again, to a place called Bethel, right here, and Abram built another altar.
I had learned by this time not to get my hopes up, though, so when we kept right on going I wasn't really surprised. We traveled on down this way to a place called the Negev, here, a kind of high rocky desert. Nowadays they call this the Route of the Patriarchs, by the way, that means the route of the fathers, and MY ABRAM was the first. Anyway when we got to the Negev there wasn't enough food for all the animals because it hadn't rained much that year, and instead of going back up to Shechem where there was plenty to eat Abram went right straight on down to Egypt. Now, Abram never told me this and I never asked him, but I don't think God told Abram to go to Egypt. I think he just wanted to go see it. So since God didn't tell Abram not to, he just up and went.
Now, this next part is really embarrassing because I did something I shouldn't have and I still don't know how Abram talked me into going along with the idea except that he could always talk me into anything and besides I didn't want him killed which he might have been if I hadn't agreed to do it so I did. And anyway Abram said that I was so beautiful that Pharaoh's men would kill him so Pharaoh could marry me. Now, when a man pays you that nice a compliment you find yourself agreeing to all kinds of things you never in the world thought you'd ever do. At least I do, but maybe you're more strong-minded than I am.
Anyway what I did was pretend to be Abram's sister. Which I was, sort of, well - half - so it was kind of true; but what we didn't tell them was that Abram and I were married. And it happened just the way Abram thought it would. Pharaoh's officers came and got me and took me back to the palace. And you know what? Even though I was scared I was also kind of excited and really curious. Until I saw Egypt I had thought Ur was the most sophisticated and exciting place in the world, but it just couldn't hold a candle to the Egyptian cities. I couldn't wait to see what the inside of the palace was like, the furniture and the wall paintings and the clothing and the dishes and the food and so on. I tried not to think about what would happen later on, you know, at bedtime. There's no point in worrying about what you can't change, and besides - God might rescue me. No harm in asking, anyway, I thought. And even though God had never actually talked to me in person, I felt I knew a lot about him from the things Abram had told me and since he really liked Abram he'd probably at least listen to me and, well, so - I asked him, and you know what? He did! God rescued me!
By the time I had gotten settled into my room which was just as gorgeous as I expected Pharaoh and almost everybody else in the palace came down with some awful sickness. I'm not sure what it was but it sounded like food poisoning. Well, the next thing you know I was back with Abram and we were all being hustled out of Egypt back to Canaan just as fast as we could go. Apparently God told Pharaoh that he was being punished for trying to commit adultery. Can you imagine that? Even Pharaoh listened to Abram’s God!
So there we were all of us traveling back north through the Negev and beyond that practically right back to where we started at Bethel. Maybe we should have just stayed there in the first place, but then we wouldn't have gotten to see Egypt and I wouldn't have gotten to see the inside of Pharaoh's palace and so I'm just as glad we did even though it was a little dangerous sometimes. It all turned out okay anyway and Pharaoh gave Abram a whole lot more animals - sheep and oxen and donkeys and camels - so we came back about twice as rich as we were when we left.
But of course that created a problem because then we needed twice as much land to graze the animals on, and there just wasn't enough to go around. So Abram and Lot divided up the land and Lot took the Jordan Valley - over here, and along down the east side of the Dead Sea (they call it the Dead Sea because it's so full of salt that fish can't live in it). And Abram got this part over here on the west. I wasn't sure that it was all that good a deal at the time because the Jordan Valley was much better land, terrifically fertile, and all the water you could ask for, but Lot got into so much trouble with the people who already lived there that I'm glad Abram gave him first choice after all. Abram and I eventually came down here, and settled in Hebron.
But you know, I still didn't have a baby. After the war that Lot got into with the kings down on the plain where he had settled (If you want to read about that it's in Genesis 14. I get really tired of wars. Men seem to like them a lot but as far as I'm con-cerned it's a really stupid way of settling things, and besides I always worry so about Abram until he gets home.) Anyway after that was over Abram and I had a talk about this business of the baby and the promise. By this time I really had my heart set on one, and I didn't care whether I got pregnant or we adopted or what. I wanted a baby and I wanted one NOW. So I said to Abram, "'The Lord helps those who help themselves,' so would you sleep with my maid Hagar and get her pregnant and then I can have the baby for my own?" And eventually Abram said yes, and he did, and she did, and Ishmael was born.
And what happened after that just goes to show you that when you help yourself to something God doesn't want you to have he doesn't help you at all. Hagar and I fought the whole time she was pregnant. She thought she should be chief wife now because she could have children and I couldn't. She started putting on airs and being so snotty and know-it-all that I just couldn't stand it. And Abram was no help at all, either. He just said, "Do what you like. It's your maid, your baby, and your household." And then he'd go off and count sheep or camels or something. Well, I suppose I should be grateful he didn't take her side, and I am, truly. But eventually I did have to kick her out. She came back later, though, and said she was sorry, so I took her back into service. But Ishmael and I never hit it off.
Well, I could go on for hours and hours but I know I have to keep it short. But one thing I just have to tell you which is the most amazing thing of all and that is that I finally did have a baby. I had long since given up hope of getting pregnant, I was definitely well past the age, when God showed up. For once I actually heard him speak myself (I was behind the door of the tent). And he told Abram to change his name to Abraham, which means 'Father of many nations,' which made me start to giggle, and then to change my name from Sarai to Sarah, that's just 'my princess' to 'princess' which doesn't seem to be a very big deal to me, and then he said I'd have a son the following year. I just couldn't help it, I sat down and laughed. After all the trouble I'd been through with Hagar and Ishmael, and as old as I was, I just couldn't believe it would actually ever happen. But it did. Our son Isaac was born the next year, just as God said.
Well, there's a lot more I could tell you, about how Lot escaped from Sodom with just his daughters, and the long trip Isaac and Abraham took together and came back changed somehow and they never would tell me what happened, and the time the angels came to dinner, and about the covenant. But the really important thing about my story is that every time we did what God told us to do, it came out exactly the way he said it would. And every time we tried to do things our own way, we messed up royally. Ishmael and his descendants have been nothing but trouble for Isaac and his descendants from that day to this, and it's all my fault for being in too big a hurry and not believing that God would come through.
I've had an absolutely terrific life. I wouldn't have missed a thing, not even the rough parts. I'm sure I've had more fun than any of the friends I left behind in Ur ever dreamed of. And it's all because Abram wanted to follow God.
