A PETULANT WISH
by Alexander Maclaren
'And Abraham said unto God, O that Ishmael might
live before Thee! -- GENESIS xvii. 18.
These words sound very devout, and they have often
been used by
Christian parents yearning for the best interests of
their children,
and sometimes of their wayward and prodigal
children. But
consecrated as they are by that usage, I am afraid
that their
meaning, as they were uttered, was nothing so devout
and good as
that which is often attached to them.
1. Note the temper in which Abraham speaks here. The
very existence
of Ishmael was a memorial of Abraham's failure in
faith and
patience. For he thought that the promised heir was
long in coming,
and so he thought that he would help God. For
thirteen years the
child had been living beside him, winding a son's
way into a
father's heart, with much in his character, as was
afterwards seen,
that would make a frank, daring boy his old father's
darling. Then
all at once comes the divine message, 'This is not
the son of the
Covenant; this is not the heir of the Promise. Sarah
shall have a
child, and from him shall come the blessings that
have been
foretold.' And what does Abraham do? Fall down in
thankfulness
before God? leap up in heart at the conviction that
now at last the
long-looked-for fulfilment of the oath of God was
impending? Not he.
'O that _Ishmael_ might live before Thee. Why cannot
_he_ do? Why may
he not be the chosen child, the heir of the Promise?
Take him, O God!'
That is to say, he thinks he knows better than God.
He is petulant,
he resists his blessing, he fancies that his own
plan is quite as
good as the divine plan. He does not want to draw
away his heart
from the child that it has twined round. So he loses
the blessing of
the revelation that is being made to him; because he
does not bow
his will, and accept God's way instead of his own.
Now, do you not
think that that is what we do? When God sends us
Isaac, do we not
often say, 'Take Ishmael; he is my own making. I
have set all my
hopes on him. Why should I have to wrench them all
away?' In our
individual lives we want to prescribe to God, far
too often, not
only the _ends_, but the _way_ in which we shall get
to the ends; and
we think to ourselves, 'That road of my own
engineering that I have
got all staked out, that is the true way for God's
providence to take.'
And when His path does not coincide with ours, then
we are discontented,
and instead of submitting we go with our pet schemes
to Him; and if
not in so many words, at least in spirit and temper,
we try to force
our way upon God, and when He is speaking about
Isaac insist on pressing
Ishmael on His notice.
It is often so in regard to our individual lives;
and it is so in
regard to the united action of Christian people very
often. A great
deal of what calls itself earnest contending for
'the faith once
delivered to the saints' is nothing more nor less
than insisting
that methods of men's devising shall be continued,
when God seems to
be substituting for them methods of His own sending;
and so fighting
about externals and church polity, and determining
that the world
has got to be saved in my own special fashion, and
in no other,
though God Himself seems to be suggesting the new
thing to me. That
is a very frequent phenomenon in the experience of
Christian
communities and churches. Ishmael is so very dear.
He is not the
child of promise, but he is the child that we have
thought it
advisable to help God with. It is hard for us to
part with him.
Dear brethren, sometimes, too, God comes to us in
various
providences, and not only reduces into chaos and a
heap of confusion
our nicely built-up little houses, but He sometimes
comes to us, and
lifts us out of some lower kind of good, which is
perfectly
satisfactory to us, or all but perfectly
satisfactory, in order to
give to us something nobler and higher. And we
resist that too; and
do not see why Ishmael should not serve God's turn
as he has served
ours; or think that there is no need at all for
Isaac to come into
our lives. God never takes away from us a lower,
unless for the
purpose of bestowing upon us a higher blessing.
Therefore not to
submit is the foolishest thing that men can do.
But if that be anything like an account of the
temper expressed by
this saying, is it not strange that murmuring
against God takes the
shape of praying? Ah! there is a great deal of
'prayer' as it calls
itself, which is just moulded upon this petulant
word of Abraham's
momentarily failing faith and submission. How many
people think that
to pray means to bring their wishes to God, and try
to coax Him to
make them His wishes! Why, half the shallow
sceptical talk of this
generation about the worthlessness of prayer goes
upon that
fundamental fallacy that the notion of prayer is to
dictate terms to
God; and that unless a man gets his wishes answered
he has no right
to suppose that his prayers are answered. But it is
not so. Prayer
is not after the type of 'O that Ishmael might live
before Thee!'
That is a poor kind of prayer of which the inmost
spirit is
resistance to a clear dictate of the divine will;
but the true
prayer is, 'O that I may be willing to take what
Thou art willing,
in Thy mercy and love, to send!'
I believe in importunate prayer, but I believe also
that a great deal
of what calls itself importunate prayer is nothing
more than an obstinate
determination not to be satisfied with what
satisfies God. If a man
has been bringing his wishes--and he cannot but have
such--continuously
to God, with regard to any outward things, and these
have not been
answered, he needs to look very carefully into his
own temper and heart
in order to make sure that what seems to be waiting
upon God in
importunate petition is not pestering Him with
refused desires. To make
a prayer out of my rebellion against His will is
surely the greatest
abuse of prayer that can be conceived. And when
Abraham said, 'O that
Ishmael might live before Thee!' if he said it in
the spirit in which I
think he did, he was not praying, but he was
grumbling.
2. And then notice, still further, how such a temper
and such a
prayer have the effect of hiding joy and blessing
from us.
This was the crisis of Abraham's whole life. It was
the moment at
which his hundred years nearly of patient waiting
were about to be
rewarded. The message which he had just received was
the most lovely
and gracious word that ever had come to him from the
heavens,
although many such words had come. And what does he
do with it?
Instead of falling down before God, and letting his
whole heart go
out in jubilant gratitude, he has nothing to say but
'I would rather
that Thou didst it in another way. It is all very
well to speak
about sending this heir of promise. I have no
pleasure in that,
because it means that my Ishmael is to be passed by
and shelved.' So
the proffered joy is turned to ashes, and Abraham
gets no good, for
the moment, out of God's greatest blessing to him;
but all the sky
is darkened by mists that come up from his own
heart.
Brethren, if you want to be miserable, perk up your
own will against
God's. If you want to be blessed, acquiesce in all
that He does
send, in all that He has sent, and, by anticipation,
in all that He
will send. For, depend upon it, the secret of
finding sunbeams in
everything is simply letting God have His own way,
and making your
will the sounding-board and echo of His. If Abraham
had done as he
ought to have done, that would have been the
gladdest moment of his
life. You and I can make out of our deepest sorrows
the occasions of
pure, though it is quiet, gladness, if only we have
learned to say,
'Not my will, but Thy will be done.' That is the
talisman that turns
everything into gold, and makes sorrow forget its
nature, and almost
approximate to solemn joy.
3. My last word is this: God loves us all too well
to listen to such
a prayer.
Abraham's passionate cry was so much empty wind, and
was like a
straw laid across the course of an express train, in
so far as its
power to modify the gracious purpose of God already
declared was
concerned. And would it not be a miserable thing if
we could deflect
the solemn, loving march of the divine Providence by
these hot,
foolish, purblind wishes of ours, that see only the
nearer end of
things, and have no notion of where their further
end may go, or
what it may be?
Is it not better that we should fall back upon this
thought, though,
at first sight, it seems so to limit the power of
petition, 'We know
that if we ask anything according to His will He
heareth us'? There
is nothing that would more wreck our lives than if
what some people
want were to be the case--that God should let us
have our own way,
and give us serpents because we asked for them and
fancied they were
eggs; or let us break our teeth upon bestowed stones
because, like
whimpering children crying for the moon, we had
asked for them under
the delusion that they were bread.
Leave all that in His hands; and be sure of this,
that the true way
to peace, to rest, to gladness, and to wringing the
last drop of
possible sweetness out of gifts and losses,
disappointments and
fruitions, is to have no will but God's will
enthroned above and in
our own wills. If Abraham had acquiesced and
submitted, Ishmael and
Isaac would have been a pair to bless his life, as
they stood
together over his grave. And if you and I will leave
God to order
all our ways, and not try to interfere with His
purposes by our
short-sighted dictation, 'all things will work
together for good to
us, because we love God,' and lovingly accept His
will and His law.
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