Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Genesis 16 (part 1), or, the ladies of the house

So, obviously, when it comes to failing gloriously, and in the exact ways that I fail, Abram is, like, the appetizer. Sarai is my nomadic doppelganger*, all, "God has not allowed me to bear a child" this and "Let me fix God's divine plan" that. I mean, ouch. The flip side of being attached to one's own performance in the world is that beating yourself up for not Accomplishing Things can start to look a lot like sulking because God didn't "allow you" to accomplish them. The basic assumption -- that we are here to do things, to be things, to fulfill some personal destiny or purpose -- is flawed, I think. Since, as I so enthusiastically remind my mom on a near daily basis in 1992, I didn't ask to be born. God doesn't "allow" or "not allow" me to do anything, really; anything I do is the result of the God who created me.

Sarai, like me in my non-blogging life, is not getting it, not so much. Genesis 16 totally reads like she'd just be here, having babies, except God somehow missed the boat and now she's 90 and Abram just needs to let it go with this waiting on the Lord. Marak Halter's novelization of Sarah's story, Sarah, has Sarai growing up in a fantastic heathen city that puts me in mind of Josh Whedon's Firefly series, crossed with a high school trip to Pompeii. If Sarai is a "convert" who married into this single, invisible, non-child-granting God, her desire to stop waiting around into her tenth decade makes more sense, and begs the questions of me -- who has internalized more Adventist Hymns than most people have heard of -- what's my excuse?

* I don't think this word means what I think it means....

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