Good Morning Yamon Ki Yesepar;
Genesis 18:10: “And Sarah heard it in the tent door which was behind him.”
I was reading in an ancient rabbinical work which noted that there was no preposition in the original text before the word “door.” Rabbi Shimon in this ancient text translated this as “Sarah heard the opening of the tent (dwelling place).” The word tent is “’ahal.” This basically means a dwelling place only this is not the usual word for a dwelling place. The “aleph, he, lamed” indicate that this is the dwelling place of God or the dwelling place of divine information. What Rabbi Shimon is putting forth is that what Sarah heard was not the opening of the tent flap, but that she heard the Shekhinah, the opening of the divine realm.
In Acts 2:2 we learn that there came a “sound” from heaven. In the Greek it is literally translated as: “Suddenly there came a sound from heaven as being borne along by a violent wind.” The opening of a portal or gateway can often come with a distinctive sound.
The point here, however, is that the message of Sarah having a child was clearly a message from heaven and yet she found it hard to believe. That is quite amazing. She is 90 years old. After all those years of walking with God and seeing his miraculous work and care, she still questions the reality of a miracle even when it is confirmed through the portals of heaven.
There is the story in Luke 1 of a man named Zacharias who was a priest. He was a man of God who faithfully served God. He and his wife prayed for years for a child, but it never happened. One day as Zacharias was alone in the temple, preparing incense, the Angel Gabriel appeared to him. He must have been some sight as Zacharias was filled with fear. Yet the angel assured Zacharias that all was ok, in fact he had good news, he would soon be a father, he and his wife’s prayers would be answered. However, Zacharias and his wife were beyond the child bearing years. So here is an arch angel, appearing before Zacarias and telling him his wife will have a child and what is Zacarias’s reaction. It is not a praise alleluia or even a yippee, he responds by saying: “Give me sign.” The angel responds: “I’m Gabriel for crying out loud, I come right from the throne of heaven. A sign he wants, so what am I, chopped liver?”
When I look at myself, I begin to think that I should not be so hard on old Sarah and Zacharias. After many years of seeing God work in my life, experiencing his faithfulness, you would think that when I run up against some difficulty, it would be a simple matter to just trust in Him. But it is so easy when the situation looks so hopeless in the natural.
I think the Talmud gives a little clue as to the problem. “A person is shown only what is reflected by his mind.” Berakhot 55b, Sarah and Zacharias were being given something that seemed impossible and because they would not let their minds go beyond the natural realm, they could not be shown the true wonder that God would perform. They could only be shown what was reflected in their own minds. We are approaching a day, perhaps it is even now, when God is ready to do something that seems impossible in our natural minds. But unless we allow our minds to move beyond the natural world, God will not be able to show us the greater work that He plans to accomplish. Sometimes we just have to believe God for the impossible. He may give us a promise and years can go by without a fulfillment. Then as Sarah and Zacharias when we have given up all hope and it seems impossible for God to fulfill that promise, that is when He will fulfill it.
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