i'm no piper.

this blog will never be a place for devotionals. i like to be ridiculous. i enjoy that way more than being serious. i'm about to share something serious, but i'm going to follow it with something ridiculous. because this is not a serious blog. usually. usually. but you can always tell i'm being serious when i use italics.

so i just read Genesis 21. it's when isaac was born.

that's nice. the promised covenant child. sarah laughed. we all like abraham.

what i really enjoyed about the story this time around, was when hagar and ishmael were sent out to the desert.

the background information here is that God promised a son to abraham, and he was old. and so was his wife sarah. like, really old. so old it's super gross to think about them having sex. so abraham was like "whatever, man. i believe you, but i don't really believe you." and then sarah was like "hagar, servant girl, sleep with my husband and give him a son." because we humans love to take matters into our own hands. so hagar had ishmael.

well in this chapter, isaac (the son that God promised would come, through sarah and abraham) was born. and sarah got all pissy because ishmael was hanging around, being an obnoxious older brother. but God said...yeah, they should probably leave.

so hagar and ishmael were banished. banished! they were sent on their way to wander around. can you imagine how lonely that was? abraham had been taking care of them and loving them (some other verses in this chapter and other chapters implied...he cared about them), so they were used to being part of that family, and all of a sudden they weren't. ishmael shouldn't have been born like that, but that's not hagar or ishmael's fault. so they were basically being punished for other people's actions. or so it seemed. they were in the desert. they were thirsty. they were crying. i'm sure it seemed like there was no hope for them, at all. i don't know the depth of those feelings, but i know what it's like to feel abandoned and hopeless. of course God showed up and said that He would make ishmael into a nation also, and it says "God was with the boy as he grew up" which is cool too.

so i was reading this story, and i just really related to it today. and i wonder why no one ever really talks about this part of the story. everyone's all about isaac and sarah and abraham. but there's this great side story about hagar and ishmael.

i mean really, when is the last time someone named their baby "hagar"? she went through some stuff.

i don't have a good summary. or a point. i'm just noting that it's a great story that is overshadowed by the awesomeness of what God did through abraham, isaac, and sarah.

so it's time for something ridiculous.

there's a girl in my class who is going through a phase. a phase where she likes to take her pants off. a lot. and sometimes when i try to pull them back up, she wiggles around so much that i can't actually get her pants back on. and yesterday i actually started laughing, maybe a little too much, because i realized how absurd it was for me to have to convince someone to keep their pants on.