Fear Not, #2

Arise!

Photo by Taven Diorio

---

I remember when I first learned about Ishmael.

My mind was blown.

I'd heard all about Isaac, over and over again, in my Baptist Sunday school. But I had never, not once, ever, heard of Ishmael.

It was at an evening service at the Assembly of God church where some of my family members attended. I was probably about eight years old. There was the AG pastor, giving all the sordid details: Sarah, Abraham's barren wife, tells her husband to take her maid as a concubine (Huh?), who then conceives a son and names him “Ishmael” (What!). Then, years, later, Sarah miraculously conceives and gives birth to Isaac and, as might be expected, complicated family dynamics ensue (How come this isn't in my children's story Bible??).

The gist of the sermon was one that you've likely heard before, if you've been around evangelical circles at all: God gives Abraham and Sarah a promise; the promise takes a while to materialize; they take matters into their own hands; stuff follows that might have been avoided if they'd only waited on God.

I'm not dissing the sermon. I think there's legitimacy to it. A lot of legitimacy, in fact.

But the thing that always strikes me when I read this story is God's kindness and care for Hagar and Ishmael, the outcasts.

Because, if you haven't read the story, they are literally cast out from the family.

Abraham and Sarah throw a big party for Isaac when he is weaned. Ishmael, who is about ten years or so older than Isaac, is heard laughing at his younger brother (Mocking? Teasing?), and Abraham, at Sarah's insistence, sends Ishmael and Hagar away into the wilderness.

When they run out of water, Hagar puts her son in the bushes and walks away from him. She doesn't want to watch him die.

This is when an angel speaks to her. This, according to my research, is the second “fear not” in the Bible.

“What ails you, Hagar?” the angel says. “Fear not, for God has heard the voice of the lad where he is” (Gen. 21:17).

I wonder what exactly God heard. Was the boy crying from hunger and thirst? Or from fear, having been abandoned first by his father, now by his mother? Was he praying?

“Arise,” the angel continues, “lift up the lad and hold him with your hand.”

~

As a person who has struggled with paralyzing anxiety on occasion, I think that sometimes the best thing you can do when you are anxious is to “Arise.” Get up and take hold of your responsibility. The anxiety that wants to keep you from deciding, acting, and living—that keeps you in a state of helplessness, full of worst-case-scenario imagery—that fills your nights and days with anguish--will sometimes dissipate when you tell yourself to “Arise!”.

At least, it works that way for me. (Sometimes.)

I was terrified once when I was about to have a baby. I was thinking, of course, of everything that could go wrong. My imagination supplied me with some pretty gnarly details.

Thankfully, I had my Bible with me. I opened it up to Isaiah 52, which says “Awake, awake! Put on your strength, O Zion...” and in verse 2, “Shake yourself from the dust, Arise...”

These words gave me strength I didn't have before. I shook myself from the dust of my vain imaginings. I arose and faced the circumstance.

I was fine. So was my baby.

Obviously, bad things do happen in childbirth. Bad things happen all the time. There was a reason for my anxiety then; there is a reason for my anxiety now. But—and I know I don't need to tell you this—most, if not all, of the energy we spend ruminating on our fears is wasted energy.

That energy is better spent engaging with life, with our responsibilities, with the things we actually have control or influence over. That energy is better spent bringing our strength, our intelligence, our courage, and our best effort to whatever it is we are facing.

We can say this, but often we can't do it on our own. We need to hear the Holy Spirit saying to us, in our hearts, “Arise!”

~

The angel tells Hagar that God has a plan for her child's life, to make of him “a great nation” (Gen 21:17).

Sometimes a vision for the future is what we need in order to live more fully in the present. A vision for the future helps us to leave behind the pain, the trauma, the tragedy, the unfair treatment, the rejection, the abandonment of the past.

A vision for the future helps us to endure the difficulties, trials, and privations of the present.

A vision for the future tells us “we exist for something better than what we have just experienced.”

So often when God shows up, He gives His people an intimation of this better future. He gives them burning bushes—transfigurations--ladders to heaven--skies full of stars to meditate on.

He gives us promises to help us through the day.

It is interesting to note that God doesn't often answer the question “why.” At least, not in this temporal life. He doesn't go into all the reasons with Hagar why this has happened, why He has allowed this.

Nor does He tell Job what was happening behind the scenes in his terrible ordeal.

But He speaks to His people, and He comforts them.

When God does speak—whether it's in a whisper, from a whirlwind, through an angel, or in the pages of the Bible—it's amazing and wondrous.

He shows up on the scene and changes everything.

Or He changes the way we see everything.

“Then God opened her eyes, and she saw a well of water. And she went and filled the skin with water, and gave the lad a drink” (Gen. 21:19).

Sometimes we are blinded by our fears, and we need God to open our eyes to see the goodness, the provision that is right in front of us.

“So God was with the lad” (Gen. 21:20).