[AI translation] There is hardly a person who is not familiar with this extremely unpleasant situation, which is usually called: a bust. For example, when a speaker is giving a speech and suddenly can't go on. People have come to listen to him expectantly because he has something to say, and the speaker has nothing to say. All eyes are on him, he himself is gasping, stammering, blushing, but it is all in vain: he has lost the thread, the very thread along which he should have continued - and now he has stopped, no further! He must leave the scene, ugly, beaten, covered with shame. He has fallen in! It is a terrible state of mind! But there is something even more terrible, though the shame, the failure, is not so obvious. It is a fall that no one notices, not even the person to whom it has happened. But this is not so much something that happens when you are making a speech as when you are going about your daily life. When you are still going about your life, going about in the world, doing your job, working, but you have actually fallen into it! He has lost the thread, the particular thread along which he is supposed to go on, and yet he goes on, but without a goal, drifting, meaningless, until it finally turns out that there is no further, he is stuck. And then one becomes perplexed, off balance, or desperate.Do you know such a situation? Have you ever been in this situation? But it shows that even in such a situation - that is, even in such a "no more" situation - there is more! Because there is a merciful God! Let us now take a closer look!
The story begins with Sarah, Abraham's wife. Perhaps we remember her: Sarah lost this particular thread when, seeing her own ageing, she could not believe that God could still give her a child, and gave her handmaid Hagar as a second wife to Abraham, so that at least she would remain heiress. We have seen at the time how many unhappy relationships resulted from this decision, which was not God's will. The child was born, but there was no joy in it, no blessing, only unrest, pain, suffering. So Sarah had already fallen into it there, she had spoiled it. If she could have, she would have preferred to make it not happen, but she couldn't! First she drove the servant away, but then she took him back again, and then she began to oppress him, to mistreat him. He wanted to get rid of his own helplessness, the bitterness of his ruined life, by pouring it all on the servant. But all this did not solve his situation. What he had ruined remained ruined. No matter what he did, he could not help the situation. I can only imagine how helplessly resigned he was to the fact that this was the way it was, there was nothing he could do to change it, he had tried, but it had only got worse, he had to put up with it, there was no solution, there was no more!
In unhappy family circumstances, in a bad marriage, or after rash actions, when one sighs: I wish I had never done it! - or in the confusion of omissions, when one longs to have done it when it was still possible, one tends to lose the thread, that it can't be helped, there is no solution, there is no more!
There are a lot of people with ruined lives. Psychologists say that 90 % of people who are married tend to come to the conclusion that they wish they had never got married, or if they had, at least not to the person they did. And this is not only the case with marriage, but also with many other journeys through life. At some point it turns out that this is not the way it should have been, but now there is no turning back, it is all messed up and there is no solution. And indeed there is no solution to it in our own strength, in our own wisdom, according to our own ability and talents, but look, "And the Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had said. For Sarah conceived in her womb, and bare Abraham a son in her old age, at the time which God had spoken to her." (Genesis 21:1-2) The Lord visited Sarah and showed her that despite her unbelief, despite her impatient scramble, despite her old, dead womanhood, despite the laws of nature, despite the exhaustion of all human possibility and utter hopelessness - there is still a way forward! He graciously returns the thread, lost through his own fault, to Sara's hand, and says: Look, I have the solution. The Lord visited Sarah and the old problem was solved at once. Inexplicably, irrationally, miraculously, by grace, divinely!
When the Lord visits someone, it is always like this: closed doors open, the "no more" is revealed to be no more, the impossible becomes possible, sadness turns to joy. Thus says Sarah in her great, liberated joy, "God has made me laugh." (Genesis 21:6) Her haste, her impatience, her disobedience, brought pain and suffering to the whole family. And the Lord's action brought laughter even to old, bitter hearts!
For you too, there is no other solution than the visitation, intervention and action of the Lord! I have seen examples where a family life that was completely broken, broken down, had its faces turned up, hearts mended, life began again in happiness and peace, because the Lord visited them and they accepted the Lord's visit. I have seen how the life of a man who was on the verge of suicide because of drunkenness was cleansed, delivered, lifted up, because the Lord visited him and did a miracle there that neither fine words, nor threats, nor great vows had been able to achieve before.
And the Lord is ever since then a constant visitor among us through His Holy Spirit in His Son Jesus Christ, Who says: "Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and have supper with him, and he with me." (Revelation 3:20) Never before has anyone waited in vain for the Lord! The soul who takes Him at His word by faith, who allows Him to visit him, who opens the door to him, will necessarily experience that there is a way forward, a way out, a way back!
See how old Sarah exults, "God has made me laugh!" Yes, all is rejoicing in victory if we allow God to glorify Himself in our lives!
Abraham is mentioned in the story. He too finds himself in a situation where he is at a standstill, not knowing what to do. In the astonishment that comes over him, he too, for a moment, almost loses the thread! Suddenly, it seems that there is no more! Here: "When Sarah saw the son of Hagar of Egypt laughing, whom she had called Abraham, she said to Abraham: 'Send this handmaid away with her son, for this handmaid's son will not be heir with my son Isaac. And it seemed very hard to Abraham for his son's sake." (Genesis 21:9-11) His wife's wish was a double burden on his heart: on the one hand, he considered this treatment unjust, his moral sense protested against it, and on the other hand he was anxious for the fate of the banished son and his mother, for he was after all her son, she loved him, he belonged to her: what would become of them alone in the wilderness, if she could no longer care for them? He is helpless in the face of this cruel wish. How can God allow this? He feels he is being asked to do the impossible, he is incapable of it, but he must do something, but what?! Where is the way out? What is the way out? - This: "But God said to Abraham: Let not the work of a child and of a servant seem hard to thee; Sarah shall say one thing to thee, obey her word, for thy seed shall be called by the name of Isaac. And I will make the son of the handmaid a people, because he is thy seed." (Gen 21:12-13)
How good it is when the believer is so directly in touch with his Lord and immediately receives the answer, the advice, the direction! God widens the believer's vision, telling him to look at events in a wider perspective, to look beyond them, to try to see the moment he is living in the context in which God has placed him. Don't just look at the detail of the event: it's no wonder if you don't understand it, if it seems unfair. But if you can see with faith that it is only a link in a great divine plan, of which God himself is the director, then what appears to be tragic is no longer so tragic. Sarah herself did not know that she was carrying out the Lord's plan for Abraham with her cruel counsel. God has a more far-reaching purpose for Ishmael, which can only be accomplished by his son's avoidance of Abraham's house.
Yes, when things "seem hard" to the point of breaking our hearts, let us try to look behind the events and see the gracious hand of the great World Organizer and accept it, even if it hurts - accept it in the belief that it was meant to be! For it is the Lord's will in our Word, and not that of a capricious, jealous woman! He is only a means to carry out a higher plan, even ignorantly, even unjustly. And in this larger perspective, Abraham, the believer, with pain, surrenders, accepts as God's will, even what had seemed so "difficult" before, and this means that he finds again that certain thread which he had already begun to lose in his pain. He realises that the world is not collapsing now, that there is still a way forward, because there is a merciful God! A believer always realises this when he comes to the point of surrendering to a merciful God!
And finally, let us look at Hagar. Above him the world was darkened in the most desperate way! He stole away into the wilderness, where his water had run out, put the child down under a bush, went on from there, sat down so as not to see the poor child die of thirst. He sat down and cried! He then quite desperately reached the limit where there really was no more! Nothing! Only death! This too as the most horrible, most miserable death!
We who know the story know that Hagar would have had no reason for this great despair, for God had led her out into the wilderness because He wanted to make His child a great nation. From him came the Arabs, the people of the wilderness, so the Lord had a great blessing in store for him, which was to be reached through the wilderness. And even there in the wilderness he took care of him: "And God opened his eyes, and he saw a fountain of water, and he went and filled the flask with water, and gave the child to drink." (Genesis 21:19)
So there is truly no hopeless situation where God cannot show us that there is more! Whoever knows Jesus, whoever has heard of the resurrection, whoever knows that even after the bloody drama of Good Friday God dared to say that there is more, for him not only the mere fact of death, but even death, is not the end! Oh, the pain, the suffering, the desolation, the hopelessness, that is to say, what is symbolized by the wilderness, does not mean for the believer that he should now lose the vitality, sit down and wait for death, that he should come to terms with the fact that there is no more! On the contrary! Stanley Jones describes how once in the Himalayas he saw an eagle caught in a great windstorm. He thought that now the raging winds were going to blow the flying animal to the ground. But that was not the case. The eagle spread its wings so skillfully that when the wind caught it, it lifted it above the storm. So the eagle did not suffer the storm, did not flee from it, but used it to soar even higher. The storms of trouble and pain are meant to lift the believer still higher. Suffering can dull a man, but it can also lift him higher. It is in the wilderness that the believer's soul is best strengthened!
It was an old custom to stretch wires between two towers of a castle. This was the eolhar tree. It made no sound when the wind was calm, but the storm played beautiful music on it. So this harp simply took advantage of the storm and turned the wind's cry into a great melody. Jesus says, "Do not be discouraged in the storm, but use it like the eoliharp. The stoic bears the burden of life, the epicurean yields to it, and the man in Christ triumphs over it! So there is more in the most desolate wilderness, for there is a gracious God!
It is indeed as we sing in the psalm:
Lord, I have trusted in you alone,
Keep me in thy mercy,
Let me not be ashamed
Thy justice turn to me,
And keep me of thy goodness,
Save me from my great affliction.
You are my rock, my strength:
I pray for your holy name,
Guide me, that I may live.
Deliver me from the snare,
That is cast upon me,
For I believe you are my Savior.
(Psalm 31 verses 1 and 3)
Amen
Date: 16 November 1952.