Jacob’s story highlights that blessings come about in unexpected ways if we’re willing to look for them and even work toward them in a sense. We may have ideas about how we want God to work in our churches but they don’t always match up with his. How might God be working unexpectedly in your church? Is the Spirit working in a way that you didn’t see coming? What trends do you see? What ministries are producing fruit?

The saga of Sarah and Hagar is raw and real. We are not unfamiliar with feelings of emptiness and hopes deferred even with thousands of years separating our lives from the lives of these women. How do we deal with brokenness and loss? How can we trust when the answers to our prayers may not be seen in our lifetimes? Where is God in our deepest struggles? He sees us. He hears us.

As Christians, we have an advantage over Abraham and the faith heroes of the Old Testament. What they looked forward to in hope, we can look back upon with awe and gratitude. However, even though we’ve received such precious promises, we can often forget that God has kept his word. We need to remember the precious promises of God. Even the ones we still wait and hope for.

One of the remarkable things about Abraham, who God chose to enter into a covenant with, was that his faith was not compartmentalized. He worshiped God wherever he went. Wherever he set up his tent, he also built an altar to the Lord. When he won a war he worshiped a Jesus type in Melchizedek. He involved his family in worship, albeit in one of the wildest texts in the Bible, as Isaac carries the wood for his own sacrifice.