“And Abraham said to God, ‘all I ask is that Ishmael might live under your blessing!’”
— Genesis 17:18
I keep coming back to this verse.
God is speaking to Abraham again. He is renewing the promise again. He is telling him that Sarah will have a son. Not Hagar. Sarah.
The promise is still bigger than Abraham can conceive.
Abraham laughs. Maybe it was an uncomfortable kind of laugh or perhaps an outright “ya right” sort of laugh, but he laughed.
Then he says, “All I ask is that Ishmael might live under your blessing!”
In other words, “God, that is a beautiful thought. But we both know I am too old. Sarah is too old. Let’s not reach too far. Just bless what is already here. I can settle for that.”
I don’t think Abraham saw Ishmael as inferior. He loved Ishmael. And God would bless him too.
But Abraham seems ready to settle for the version of the promise he can understand.
That is what keeps grabbing my attention.
Sometimes God’s promise feels too large for our tired faith. So we lower our expectations. We stop asking for resurrection and settle for maintenance. We stop believing for new life and ask God to simply preserve what already exists.
“Just bless this, Lord.”
“Just keep this alive.”
“Just make the best of what I can see.”
And God, in his kindness, still says “sure, but also no”.
Not because Ishmael does not matter.
But because Isaac is still coming.
God is not limited to the thing we have already produced, arranged, or accepted as realistic.
There are times when faith means bringing God our Ishmael. The thing we love. The thing we understand. The thing we think is enough.
And then hearing God say, “I will bless him. But I am not finished.”
That is grace.
God can care for what is already in our hands while still calling us to believe for what only he can bring to life.