Mangoes? From an orange tree??

He slept with Hagar, and she conceived. When she knew she was pregnant, she began to despise her mistress. (Genesis 16:4)

But Sarah saw Ishmael—the son of Abraham and her Egyptian servant Hagar—making fun of her son, Isaac. So she turned to Abraham and demanded, “Get rid of that slave woman and her son. He is not going to share the inheritance with my son, Isaac. I won’t have it!” (Genesis 21:9-10)

Growing up, we were blessed to have parents who were very involved in raising us. Their involvement ranged from ensuring that meals were eaten together to checking on our progress in school. So we grew up in a rather structured way and I personally attribute much of what I am to my upbringing, as most people would. One thing that I remember my father for was his punctuality. Literally anyone who knows my dad knows that you’ll plan to meet at 8:00am and he’ll be there by 7:55am just to stick to the agreed upon time. If he’s late by 2 minutes, you can be sure that there’s a very reasonable explanation for it and I sometimes feel like he genetically wired it into my system somehow growing up. On Sundays, we would do our best to get ready before he does because he would be at the door waiting when it was time to leave and on a few occasions, one or a few of us were left behind just to teach us how important being punctual really was.

What’s the point in all this? Hagar is shown in Genesis 16 as being the one through whom Sarai (she hadn’t yet had her name changed to Sarah) wanted to have a child since she was old and couldn’t see how she could have kids. But after Hagar gets pregnant with Ishmael, she begins looking down upon her boss! This shows that it wasn’t the pregnancy which changed her. Rather, it revealed who she was. She’s then chased away and the angel of the Lord sends her back to be submissive to Sarai, her boss. Later in chapter 21, we see Ishmael, who is about 14 years old now, is making fun of Isaac, the promised son of his mother’s boss. We all know that some kind of behavior from children is only developed when the parents allow it, whether explicitly or implicitly. Having been chased before, it was no surprise that Sarah (her name had now been changed) chased them away again, and this time, for good.

Many times as parents (and future parents), we know what kind of standards that we expect of our children. We want them to be kind, loving, responsible, and respectful and all those other things, but we rarely expect the same from ourselves. We talk trash about other people and condemn people’s children who do the same. Or like Hagar, we show contempt for our superiors and but expect our children to live by higher standards. How???!!! We cannot require children to live by a standard that we don’t live by. I am almost 100% sure that my timekeeping comes from my dad and how I saw him live by that standard. Now many people are very responsible and structured despite being raised up without proper role models. But that’s a one in a hundred chance. Would it be wise to take that risk? As we raise our kids, especially for mothers like me who at some point felt that we had no moral standing to expect any more from our kids because of our “colorful” past, it is still our responsibility to work on making ourselves and our character better so that our kids have a standard by which to live. Have you ever heard of mangoes growing on an orange tree? I sure haven’t and that’s because the principle of sowing and reaping is no respector of persons. We can only produce who we are.