Author Archives: Michelle Bauer

Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!” When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.”  

And as they went, they were cleansed. 

One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan. Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.” – Luke 17:11-19 (NIV) 

(Read previous reflections on earlier portions of this passage here and here.) 

As you read this story, what do you observe, hear, and smell? Let’s focus our attention on verses 15 and 16 of this passage. “One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him – and he was a Samaritan.”  

These ten men were not simply healed of a physical disease. They were given their whole lives back. They could now go back to their homes, their families, their work. What do you think they did first? Just imagine the ripples of joy that were felt throughout their families and communities.  

Verse 15 seems to describe a moment when one of the men looked down and realized he had been healed. Have you ever had a moment when you noticed healing had taken place in your life? When one man realized he had been healed, he stopped and came back to where Jesus was. Yet what was he delaying by making this return trip? 

As he gets back to Jesus, the man begins to praise God in a loud voice. There’s that loud voice again! Have you ever been so grateful to someone that you’ve expressed your thanks in a big way? How did they respond? Have you ever been thanked that way? 

After expressing his thankfulness, the man throws himself at Jesus’ feet.  Imagine yourself at Jesus’ feet. What would you say to him? Think about asking Jesus what he would say to you. 

We don’t know exactly what the man said to Jesus but we do know that he thanked him for his healing. At that time, Samaritans were seen as “less than” by the Jewish world. Have you ever felt this way? 

What would you like to thank God for today? How will you thank him? Take some time each day this week to thank God for the ways he is cleansing you. Ask him for guidance as you live the rest of this day. 

On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”

“Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”

His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.

Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.

Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”

They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”

What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. – John 2:1-11

Did you know that the average cost of a wedding in the U.S. is around $30,000?  Everyone these days wants a fairy tale, celebrity-style wedding. We have exchanged opulence for the sacred. Everyone once in a while, though, a couple comes along that understands that marriage isn’t just about falling in love and taking the next step.

As followers of Jesus, we believe that marriage is a sacred covenant between two people. In fact, God created marriage as a visual reminder of the intimate relationship that he wants to have with us. We are God’s bride and he is our groom. God not only invented marriage, he performed the first wedding in the Garden of Eden.

When you consider all of that, it’s fascinating to think that Jesus attended weddings while he was on earth.  To have Jesus physically present as a guest at your wedding must have been like having Mark Zuckerberg help you set up your Facebook account!

But that’s exactly where we find Jesus in John 2 – at a wedding. At this point, Jesus is just getting his public ministry up and running. He has been baptized, he has withstood the tempting by Satan in the wilderness and has started identifying his disciples.  And in the midst of all of these ministry-launching activities, Jesus takes a break to attend a wedding.

1. The wine always runs out.

To run out of wine was a catastrophe.  In a time and place where we have a grocery store on almost every corner, it’s hard to wrap our heads around what a crisis this was. If we run out of soda or hot dogs at our cookout, what do we do? We send someone to the store.  It wasn’t that easy in New Testament times.   Hosts spent time planning and gathering supplies way ahead of time, especially for a party like this. Jewish weddings lasted longer than just a few hours. They could last as long as seven days.  That’s a lot of food and drink to plan for!

Making this situation worse was the fact that Jewish culture placed a high priority on hospitality.  Love and respect was shown by not only inviting guests into your home but by pulling out all the stops to make sure they were well cared for.  To not be able to refill someone’s cup with wine was an insult. It said, “I didn’t care enough about you to plan well.”

So, imagine the horror as the wine begins to run out.  Maybe more guests came than expected. Maybe a clumsy servant spilled some wine on accident. We aren’t told why the wine ran out, only that it did.

I can imagine the hosts of the party frantically whispering about what they were going to do.  They could have pretended everything was fine and filled the wineskins with water and continued to pour hoping no one would notice.  They could have attempted to hurriedly make their own wine. They could have just cut their losses and run, figuring they’d change their identity and never be seen again.

Have you ever been tempted to do any of those things when the wine ran out at your party?  I’m not talking about literal wine.  I’m talking about the panic we feel when the resources we brought to a situation start to run out.  When our “in love” feeling runs out and 50 years of marriage seems like a really long time.  Or our patience runs out and parenting becomes more hard than fun.  Or the ministry we’ve committed to isn’t fulfilling anymore and we are easily irritated by those we are meant to serve. Or school is boring and we’ve only finished the first quarter.  Has your wine ever run out?  Mine has, in a lot of situations.

And when it does I’m tempted to do all of those things: stick a smile on my face and pretend everything is fine and hope no one notices, try to reenergize myself with pep talks in the mirror or when all else fails, just walk away.  Instead, whoever was in charge of the wine at this party does a hard but wise thing. They tell someone. We don’t know who they told first but eventually word got to Mary and Mary knew to take them to Jesus.

The “wine” that we bring to any situation will eventually run out.   It’s not a matter of “if” but “when.” We will get tired. We will get frustrated. We will start to doubt our ability to pull something off. We will want to quit. Some of us have amazing amounts of discipline and will power and can push ourselves for a long time. Others of us have a track record of petering out at the first sign of difficulty.  But eventually, we all run out of whatever we brought to the party.

That’s the bad news but here is the good news – running out of wine is a gift. It doesn’t feel that way in the moment. As we feel ourselves about to burn out it is scary and we are certain it will end in embarrassment.  But regardless of how it feels, it is a blessing. Because running out of wine is what brings us to Jesus and when we ask him to, Jesus will begin to work.

In what situation are you “running out of wine”?  Where have you been running on your own steam and you just know it’s about to run out? You just don’t have one more pep talk in you. Fight the urge to pretend or hide. When the wine shortage comes into the light it can be resolved.

2. Jesus turns obedience into wine.

As I imagine the scene, Mary has dragged Jesus into the kitchen and filled him in on the situation.  And we witness an exchange between a son and his mom that is so typical. Here is a mom who thought she knew what her son ought to be doing. And here was a son asserting himself as an adult who needed to be tuned in with God’s plan, not his mom’s.

So Jesus says, “I’m not sure I’m supposed to do anything about this…”  But Mary ignores all of that and starts giving orders to the servants: “Do whatever he tells you.”

If I had to preach this sermon in five words, this would be it. “Do whatever he tells you.”

When your wine runs out and you come to Jesus, do whatever he tells you to do.  In this case, he tells the servants to grab the jars sitting in the corner and fill them up with water.

What are the servants thinking at that moment? This makes no sense. Have you ever had Jesus ask you to do something that to you seems to make “no sense”?   But can you see the kindness in Jesus’ instruction?  He could have said, “Okay, if I’m going to fix this, I’m going to need 2,400 pounds of the best grapes you can find.”  (Which, by the way, is how many grapes he would have needed to make that much wine).  He would have lost them at step 1.

Instead, Jesus takes ordinary things, the things they have at hand – water and jars – and uses them to make something sacred.  The materials weren’t important, what he blessed was their obedience. They didn’t have to go on a search for rare ingredients or even go through a bunch of steps. They had to take ordinary things that were right in front of them and do what Jesus told them to do.  Sounds easy, right? But sometimes it’s the easy things that trip us up. These servants were willing to suspend their skepticism and their opinions and enter into the miracle that was happening around them. They didn’t ask Jesus to explain or defend. They simply obeyed.

In the same way, Jesus doesn’t demand that we hunt up magical ingredients to replenish our souls. He uses the ordinary things of our lives to do his work.  He uses things like forgiveness, rest, prayer, exercise, books, conversation, communion and music.  He turns our willingness to obey into wine that will keep us going in whatever situation he has led us into.

Are we willing to obey even when it doesn’t make sense or there’s not a clear connection between what he’s asked us to do and the outcome we are hoping for?

The servants filled the jars, drew out a ladle full and walked it over to the master of the banquet.   And somewhere in that process Jesus turned the water into wine.

3. Jesus didn’t just give them wine, he gave them himself.

And not just any wine.  The master of the banquet is so amazed by the quality of this wine that he interrupts the groom’s celebration to have a conversation about it. “… you have saved the best for last.”

In this culture, hosts started these long parties with the good stuff while people were sober and could appreciate it. Then as the event went along and people started to get a little tipsy, a host would start to water down the wine to make it stretch or bring out a lesser quality wine.

I do this in my spiritual life too. I start something – a relationship or commitment, with lots of energy and excitement and then as it goes on I feel myself getting tired and resentful. I run out of wine. Pretty soon, I’m bringing out the watered down wine or stale chips to my marriage or children or my ministry.

The master of the banquet is amazed that the hosts would end the party with better quality wine than they started with.  “…you have saved the best for last.”  Jesus doesn’t make cheap wine to just get them through with the minimum embarrassment. He makes the best wine they’ve had so far.

Jesus didn’t just meet this need with quality but with quantity as well.  Verse six tells us that the servants filled up six jars which could hold 20-30 gallons each. Let’s err on the conservative side and say that Jesus made 120 gallons of wine.

Maybe a visual will help.

You know these bottles that we put on top of water coolers? They hold five gallons of water. Jesus made enough wine to fill 24 of them.  Or maybe this helps…120 gallons would fill over 600 wine bottles.

That sounds like Jesus, doesn’t it?  He doesn’t just provide enough. He brings an abundance.

See why it’s a gift when our measly amount of homemade wine runs out? In the moment it feels scary and we are out of control. But if we are willing to tell Jesus “I’m empty” and we are brave enough to obey, we get to partake in his abundance.

As I studied these verses, I found myself following the imagery of the wine.  Remember at the last supper with his disciples, Jesus offered them a cup of wine and told them it was his blood which would be poured out for them. He was using wine as a symbol to represent himself. Jesus didn’t just give this newlywed couple some crates of wine. He gave them himself.

When we run out of wine, Jesus himself is willing to enter into our situation and bring with him all of who he is. Now we aren’t running on our ability to love or extend grace. We have tapped into God’s supply of love and grace.

Verse 6 says that Jesus pointed to a specific set of jars that he wanted the servants to use – jars used for ceremonial washing.  Old Testament Law had given the Israelites lists of things that were considered clean and unclean. When a person came into contact with something or someone that made them unclean they went through a purification process that made them clean again.

By the time we get to the New Testament, though, the Pharisees and Teachers of the Law had convinced everyone that they should assume they were always unclean. So, every household had these stone jars on hand to hold the water they needed to go through the burdensome process of making themselves and everything they touched ceremonially clean.

We aren’t just talking basic cleanliness and hygiene here. The religious rulers had expanded on God’s law to the point that it became ridiculous.  That’s why one household needed that many large jars for holding water.

Do you see the connection? Jesus took these jars that symbolized burden and effort and a sense that you were never fully clean and he turned them into things that held joy and abundance. The ceremonial washing rituals cleaned just the outside of a person but the wine that Jesus made entered into a person and mingled with their body chemistry.

Jesus didn’t give them wine, he gave them himself and all that comes with being mingled with God including freedom from the burden of having to keep going when you just can’t anymore.

When we run out of steam, Jesus offers us himself. He is the provision that keeps us moving ahead.  That’s how we can begin the second half of a 50-year marriage with renewed commitment.  Or how we can finish a school year better than we started. Or remain present with a child who is struggling.  Because when Jesus shows up with his wine – it is always the best and there is always more than enough.

Jesus performed his first public miracle at a wedding. As John summarizes the event in verse 11 he refers to this miracle as a sign. A sign designed to announce to those who witnessed it that Jesus is the Messiah – the One they’ve been waiting for. He used this event to reveal who he really was. And the result was that his disciples put their faith in him.

That’s the whole point.  God replenishes our wine not just so that we can stay married of get good grades or keep our jobs.  These are all good things but we’ve got to think bigger. He makes wine in the face of our drought to reveal his glory so that people can believe.  This isn’t just about us… it’s about building his kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.

Jesus’ glory is not revealed when I grit my teeth and pretend.

Hanging on by sheer will does not build anyone’s faith.  But when we confess our lack and allow him to work through our obedience, then the miracle happens.

Jesus was at this wedding and able to fix this problem because he’d been invited. So that’s where we need to start. Have you invited Jesus to be a part of your life? Have you invited Jesus to be involved in every part of your life? Now is a great time to surrender. What is that last piece you are holding on to? Will you let it go?

Maybe you need to admit that you are running out of wine.  Maybe you’ve been pretending that everything’s fine while you scramble trying to figure out how to get more wine.  Now is a great time to just say, “I’m empty…”

Are you struggling with obedience?  Has God told you what to do and it just doesn’t make sense? Are you trying to figure out how filling jars with water creates wine?  Maybe this is the time to let go of your need for an explanation and make a decision to obey.

Now there was a famine in the land. So Abram went down to Egypt to reside there as an alien, for the famine was severe in the land. When he was about to enter Egypt, he said to his wife Sarai, “I know well that you are a woman beautiful in appearance; and when the Egyptians see you, they will say, ‘This is his wife’; then they will kill me, but they will let you live. Say you are my sister, so that it may go well with me because of you, and that my life may be spared on your account.” When Abram entered Egypt the Egyptians saw that the woman was very beautiful. When the officials of Pharaoh saw her, they praised her to Pharaoh. And the woman was taken into Pharaoh’s house. And for her sake he dealt well with Abram; and he had sheep, oxen, male donkeys, male and female slaves, female donkeys, and camels.

But the Lord afflicted Pharaoh and his house with great plagues because of Sarai, Abram’s wife. So Pharaoh called Abram, and said, “What is this you have done to me? Why did you not tell me that she was your wife? Why did you say, ‘She is my sister,’ so that I took her for my wife? Now then, here is your wife, take her, and be gone.” And Pharaoh gave his men orders concerning him; and they set him on the way, with his wife and all that he had. – Genesis 12: 10-20

This morning we are going to spend some time talking about faith and fear.  As we look at Abraham’s life, we see him respond with great faith when God called him to leave his home.  Hebrews 11 says that Abraham, “obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going.”  That would be a hard one to swallow wouldn’t it, “Pack the U-haul and then I’ll tell you where your first stop is.” But Abraham accepts God’s invitation and sets off towards Canaan.

Following God doesn’t keep us from hard times.  It’s one thing to be obedient when life is great and the adventure is fun. But how do we do when things get hard and uncertain? As we study Abraham’s life, we see him make some good decisions and some really bad decisions. But before we judge too harshly let’s remember that Abraham is pretty new at this following God thing. He is learning what it means to follow God in all circumstances.  Just like we are.

When summer was underway at my house I became our children’s cruise director. Our seven year old son began most days by asking, “What’s the plan mom?”  What he really means is, “What are you going to do today to make sure I have fun?”

That’s how we ended up at the library watching a demonstration hosted by a group of people who train therapy dogs. The kids had fun seeing the dogs and watching them do tricks like jump over things and go through tunnels. I expected just to sit in the back, zone out and be grateful that someone else was entertaining my children for a few minutes. But then the presenter started to talk about how they train the dogs and something she said caught my attention.

She explained that the first step in training a dog to do unusual things is to get them to trust you.  This is the example she gave: If you want to train a hunting dog to go through a hollow log in search of prey, you don’t start out by commanding the dog to go through the log. You start in a familiar place and coach them through a fabric tunnel. This builds trust in the dog towards its trainer.  Then one day the dog will respond obediently to the command to go into the log – knowing that the owner can be trusted to be looking out for their welfare.

This provides a great picture of the journey God is leading Abraham on. If you are familiar with Abraham’s story you know that God is going to ask Abraham to do a BIG thing in a few chapters. A thing that will require amazing amounts of obedience that only comes through trust. But God doesn’t start there. He begins by leading Abraham through a series of exercises or situations intended to build Abraham’s trust in Him as a God who is looking out for the welfare of his child.

Abraham has responded to God’s call and left his homeland, all that was familiar, all that meant stability and moved his family to Canaan or what will someday be referred to as the Promised Land.  We get the impression that he hadn’t been there very long when an opportunity to exercise his new faith comes along.

Fear and Faith

At this point in the story, don’t you want to shake your head and say, something like “Bless your heart…” to poor Abraham.  How can he show such faith and then just 10 verses later be scrambling in fear?!  But let’s remember that we have the benefit of seeing Abraham’s life in its entirety – summarized down into a few chapters. We aren’t walking with him through famine and years of waiting and disappointment.  It’s a lot harder to live a life than to read about one.

We are all a mixture of fear and faith. We all have great moments of obedience when we sense that we are in the middle of God’s will and are sure what the next thing is.  And we all have moments of extreme doubt when we are sure God has abandoned us and we default to, “every man for themselves”.

We love and serve a mysterious God who refuses to be predictable or obvious. That is why we must allow him to build our trust. And trust is built as we walk with him through the stuff of life. It is not built in a class or by reading a book. Our faith is strengthened the same way our muscles are – by using them.

I would encourage you to pay attention to the moments where you are quick to show faith and the places where fear tends to creep in. Present me with a situation where my children are sick or hurting and I really have to fight back fear. I think for a lot of us, faith and fear come in patterns.  When fear shows up it is a sign that God has work to do in that place.  Celebrate where you are being faithful but don’t hide or minimize the places where fear is still leading.

The Promised Land is Dependent on God’s Presence and Provision

With great faith, Abraham has walked with God into the Promised Land but that faith is about to be tested because the Promised Land is fragile. It depends on God’s presence and provision in a way that is unique from the nations that surround it. The Promised Land or Canaan relies on two rainy seasons each year to provide enough water to maintain crops. If just one of those rainy seasons failed to come they were in immediate danger of famine.

Compare that to Egypt which was located on the Nile River. The Egyptians had a whole river as a constant water supply.  That set-up provided better protection from famine. The river may go up or down but it takes a lot to make a whole river dry up.

Isn’t it interesting that it is God’s plan to settle his people in a place that is dependent on fresh, continuous supplies of water? It reminds me of God’s provision of manna in the dessert. He could have parked them next to a Bi-Lo. But instead he builds their faith by putting them in a situation where they have to rely on Him. The Israelites had to trust God to provide food daily.

In the same way, God has promised to provide us with all the things we need for life and godliness but God doesn’t back the truck up and deliver a whole life-time supply at once. We have to trust that he will provide and keep on providing as we face each day’s challenges. It’s a risky way to live.  We live in a Costco world where we can buy 30 rolls of toilet paper at a time. But He whispers, “Stay close and I will provide what you need, when you need it.”

Sure enough, just as Abraham is getting settled a famine hits – and it was severe. It must be pretty scary to not be able to grow or buy food. Abraham has people depending on him to provide for them.  Faith or fear?  Abraham’s first response shows signs of a developing faith. He doesn’t turn around and go home.  He could have packed up his family, rolled up the tents and headed back to Haran – back to what had to have seemed like security and safety in a crisis moment.  Instead, Abraham heads to Egypt “to live there for a while” to wait for the famine to pass.

Egypt plays such an interesting role in the Bible. It is the place where God’s people go and keep returning to for safety:

• Abraham is headed there for refuge from a famine
• Joseph ends up there after his brother’s try to kill him
• His whole family immigrates there during another famine
• While in Egypt they grow from being a large family to being a nation
• Mary and Joseph flee to Egypt when Herod is on the hunt to kill Jesus

Now I know what you are thinking…. But wasn’t it the Egyptians that made slaves out of the Israelites and kept them hostage?  How could Egypt be a safe place and enslave people?

Here’s what I wonder. Did the Israelites come to Egypt to avoid a famine and then get too comfortable? Did they stay long past when they should have returned to the land they knew God had given to them? Abraham’s plan is to live in Egypt “for a while” and then go back to the place where God had led him when the danger has passed.

When I was in Guatemala last summer, we met a pastor named “Shorty”. He’s a former gang member who has returned to his old neighborhood to tell people still trapped in gangs about Jesus.  At one point a few years ago, he made a gang leader mad and his church got word that his life was in danger. So, he agreed to move out of the neighborhood temporarily and stay in a secure apartment in a safer part of town.  Shorty shared with us that he began to really enjoy his new living situation. It was nicer than where he’d been living, in a new apartment building in a better part of town, and it was comfortable to feel safe all the time.  So, when the threat on his life passed he continued to live in the apartment. And his church encouraged him to live there indefinitely.  But he began to sense that being away from his people was not good.  He felt like it was time to leave safety and return to where God had called him to live and minister.

There is a time for seeking refuge and a time to return to where God has called us. Following Jesus will be a little bit scary. He takes us to the point where we are uncomfortable. Because that is where we start to rely on him. And as we rely on him we begin to trust him more and more.

The “I’s” Have It

Abraham’s plan is to stay until the famine passed and then head back to Canaan. For a guy who’s not planning to stay long-term in Egypt, he didn’t make a very good exit plan, though did he?

Here’s where we start to see the fear at work.

Abraham is nervous because he has a pretty wife and the Pharaoh has a reputation for noticing pretty women and insisting on marrying them.  Abraham also knew that the Egyptians felt more strongly about not committing adultery than they did about not committing murder. So, while the Pharaoh would not take Sarah to be his wife while she was married to Abraham, he wouldn’t hesitate to kill Abraham and then take her to be his wife.

At this point in their journey, Sarah was 65 years old, which for her was sort of middle-age because she lived to be 127. She apparently was a great beauty.   One commentator remarked that “She had had no children or other hardships to bring on premature decay.”  As anyone with children is able to attest, raising kids does take years off your life – not the bad ones at the end but the good ones in the middle – as my brother once said.

Abraham is afraid for his life and he begins to make some really bad decisions.

Did you notice all the “I’s” “me’s” and “my’s”?

“I know what a beautiful woman you are…”

“I’m afraid they will kill me…”

“Say you are my sister, so that I will be treated well…”

He has forgotten hasn’t he? He has forgotten what God said when he called him. Someone wrote that, “He acts as though God’s promise had not taken place.”

Remember the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12: 2-3:

“I will make you into a great nation

And I will bless you;

I will make your name great,

And you will be a blessing.

I will bless those who bless you,

And whoever curses you I will curse;

And all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Do you see the pattern? God does the action and Abraham reaps the benefits.  God will make him into a great nation, God will make his name great, God will do the blessing and cursing as protection.

I’m not saying that Abraham was to sit by and passively watch the action. He was supposed to be obeying and following.  But God is the one who was controlling the circumstances and outcomes not him.

God is fine with us making a plan when we find ourselves in a crisis. What he is not fine with is when we begin to scramble. We’ve all done it right?! We’ve all had moments when we forget the promises and who is in control and we begin to think things and do things that attempt to put us in control.  We begin to manipulate situations and people and sometimes even the truth because fear is whispering in our ear that we are the only ones looking out for us.

Abraham has forgotten the promise and all of a sudden we begin to hear a lot of “I” talk. It’s exactly what happens when I forget and begin to scramble.

I start thinking things like:

“I have to figure this out…”

“I have to decide what’s next”

“I need to get on top of this situation. What I need is a really good list.”

“I better stay up all night Googling for answers.”

It was God’s responsibility to keep Abraham safe so that he could become a great nation, not Abraham’s. And what happens when Abraham takes over God’s job? It’s not pretty.

Abraham hatches a plan. “I’ll tell Pharaoh that Sarah is my sister – which by the way is half true. Sarah was Abraham’s half-sister. They shared a father.  But whole lie or half lie doesn’t matter here. What matters is that Abraham was not able to trust God’s promise to protect him.

So, Abraham marches into Egypt, turns his wife over to the Pharaoh and waits to see what will happen.  Wouldn’t you have liked to see Sarah’s face when he unveils his big plan?! I’m sure she especially loved the part about how her being “loaned” to Pharaoh would keep Abraham safe.  He should have been more afraid of Sarah than Pharaoh at that point!

Poor Abraham had given his life to follow a God who he didn’t think was even capable of protecting him.  In the grand scheme of history, protecting Sarah from the Pharaoh would have been one of the easier things God had done.  But Abraham doesn’t know that yet. He hasn’t had the experience with God to know that he was capable of acting and would act to keep the promise he had made.  Abraham was still in training.

In the end Abraham sees that God is quite capable of protecting him and his family.  All of a sudden Pharaoh’s whole household is sick. It’s bad when someone in your house is sick but isn’t it worse when your whole family is sick at once? Well, Pharaoh had lots of wives and lots of kids and lots of servants – all sick at once – so it got his attention fast.

Somehow he links the sickness to Abraham and he says “Go get him!”

Abraham appears in front of him and Pharaoh asks him,

“What have you done to me?”

Now no one is happy with Abraham. He has let fear rule and he has made a mess. He has endangered people’s lives, caused lots of people to become sick, almost lost his wife and made an enemy of a neighboring country.

Here’s my favorite part of the story though. God has been at work the whole time. While Abraham is scrambling and scheming, God is quietly working his plan.

• God is prompting the Pharaoh to hand over his riches to Abraham in the form of sheep, cattle, donkeys, servants and camels
• God is orchestrating an escape plan for Sarah
• And God is clearing the way for them to return to the Promised Land

Why don’t we let God do what he says he will do?  Why do we try to be our own bodyguards?

• Are you letting fear lead? Are you scrambling for control?
• Have you remembered God’s promises? The ones that tell us that God is always working on our behalf? Or his promise that he is always with us?
• Are you acting and making choices as if his promises are true?

I invite you to talk with God about the situations in your life. Where are you choosing faithfulness and where are you letting fear lead? Ask God to show you. Confess those places where fear has been allowed to call the shots and ask him to strengthen your faith.