Sarah

05Sep07

That’s my real name, and I have never really known how I felt about it, as a name.  It’s not the name I would have, or I suppose HAVE choosen for myself.  I don’t dislike it, I just never really felt like it was MY name.

But that’s not the point because I’m actually not talking about myself.

I’m talking about another Sarah, the very first Sarah, if you believe the Jewish and Christian and Muslim (I think) tradition.

Sarah, orginally known as Sarai, the wife of Abraham, who’s name change supposedly came straight from God him/herself.  If you aren’t familiar with her story, I’ll give you a very brief recap.

Sarah was quite old, and had no kids.  It had long since passed the time for hope.  But then God promises her that she will have a child, that her and Abraham’s descendants will be as many as the stars in the sky.  And you can see more stars when you’re in the desert than anywhere else.

Sarah apparently didn’t know exactly what to do with this information, and while keeping faith in the promise, she felt the need to help God out a little.  As time passed, she decided that if her husband had a child by her servant Hagar, that child would “belong” to her and her husband both, as she owned Hagar.

The plan became a reality as Ishmaeul was born into this awkward arrangement, and 7 years later Sarah found that she herself was pregnant.

Now it was weirder still, and it doesn’t sound as though it brought out the best in anyone involved.  Which son was the one promised by God?  Sarah had the obvious upper hand and abused it.  Hagar and her young son ended up fleeing through the desert where God provided for them miraculously.

Both sons fathered huge races of people, the Jews and the Arabs, as the story goes.  As many as there are stars, it would seem.

Everytime I read this story, I wonder if God planned for it to be different.  Did Sarah regret her choice to offer up her slave?  I’m guessing she did, but does that make Ishmauel a mistake?  God didn’t seem to view him as one, and seems to keep all promises made to Abraham in regard to both of his sons.

How did Sarah come to the choice she did, and would I have done differently?  Aren’t we supposed to help bring about the will of God?  (Keep in mind I use the word God loosely, I don’t think it changes the point of anything I’m saying if you were to subsitute “God” with “divine power” or even “fate” or anything along those lines, and regardless of your religious faith, I think this is a story to be learned from.)

Would a little comman sense have helped here?  Doesn’t it seem like an obvious bad idea to have someone else sleep with your husband, although happy families have certainly come from stranger arrangements.

Was Sarah doing exactly as she should, finding ways to make God’s promise a reality?  Creating heaven on earth?  Is the story really over, and if not, does the way it ends, happily or not, make a difference in whether what she did was right or wrong?

How much of a role in creating God’s promise was Sarah expected to play?  When you know something is meant to come to you, do you simply sit and wait, or pull out all the tricks in your bag to hasten it?

And it occurs to me, as these questions roll off my fingers, that perhaps I am talking about my own story after all.

Filed under: autobio, can't make this shit up   |  9 Comments