When God changes your destiny, He makes sure you know you're His.
In last week's blog, I presented the God Who inserts Himself into the equation: When He calls us, changing our destiny, He also enables us through His gracious Spirit. In the case of Abraham, God inserted the "Ha" sound into the middle of the name, Abram, demonstrating that it was He Himself who would enable the covenant to be fulfilled. RuAH—the same creative Spirit of God that "hovered over the waters of the deep" and created the world from chaos would keep covenant with His chosen.
However, Abraham wasn't the only one God changed the name and destiny. In Genesis 17:15-22 we see that God changed Abraham's wife's name as well:
"God also said to Abraham, 'As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.'" (Genesis 17:15-16)
Many scholars list the meaning of Sarai as "Princess" or "Noble Woman." Given her beauty and status, it seems an apt name. But God changed it. When God added the "Ha" sound to the end of her name, making it Sarah, He inserted Himself again into the equation. This time, it changed her name to mean "My Princess."
Not Abraham's princess, mind you...God's princess. He stamped her destiny with the declaration that she was HIS. And He would give her the son.
It's one thing to be a princess of the world, it's an entirely different thing to be claimed by the King of the Universe.
It's interesting to note that this action and God's promise to Sarah reinforces the understanding that Sarah was a part of this covenant too. It wasn't JUST with Abraham and the males in his household (who were circumcised later that very day), but also with Sarah, her womb, and the generations that would come from their wombs.
When I was newly married to my second husband, I held on to the hope that I would have children someday because God promised me, in a vision of a blonde-haired boy and a girl, that I would have a son and his name would be Josiah. He told me other important things about my children, some that have already been fulfilled and others that I tuck away in my heart.
A story like Sarah's—somewhat similar to my own—gives us a different perspective on our Father God.
Sometimes it's easy to read the Bible and feel a little left out as a woman. Adamic Covenant, Noahic Covenant, Abrahamic Covenant, and Mosaic Covenant...the men were the principal players, I get it. But we must include the God who protected Sarai when her husband basically pimped her out in Egypt (twice!), the God who changed her name, claiming her for His own, and the God who keeps His promise to give us a destiny in Him.
Grace makes us His.