Our church is going through some changes.  Therefore, our family is going through some changes.  My husband is a pastor so this is nothing new, we seem to live in a lifestyle of change, but it is hard none the less. 

In an effort to figure out what is happening, people are talking.  The only problem is, people are talking to others who are just as confused as they are.  People who don't know but want to know.  The snowball of gossip is rolling.  People are worried, concerned, hurt, scared and every other emotion you can think of.  We seem to want a black and white, right and wrong situation so that we can pick sides.  We want someone to be totally right and someone to be totally wrong.  We want to have someone to blame.  We want to understand. We want for everything to be okay.... to be just like it was.  We want to hope.

So I was thinking of Sarah, 1 Peter 3:3-6 is speaking directly to wives, but I believe God is speaking to all believers who need hope.  "For in this way in former times holy women also, who hoped in God, used to adorn themselves, being submissive to their own husbands.  Thus Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him lord, and you have become her children if you do what is right without being frightened by fear. " 

Sarah is most remembered as the wife who laughed when God said she would have a baby in her old age.  That doesn't sound like her hope was in God!  But wait, there's more to Sarah's life than that.  In Gen 12 we find Abram and Sarai leaving Ur and following God to a place he hasn't told them yet.  As they go through Egypt, Abram tells Sarai to tell the Pharoah that she's his sister and not his wife.  Why?  Because Sarai was beautiful and Abram was afraid that Pharoah would kill him to take Sarai.  Sarai submits to Abram, God intervenes and Sarai is saved.  Abram doesn't just do this once, he does it twice.  In Gen. 20, after he has been promised a son by God, he tells the King Abimelech that Sarah is his sister (after all they have the same father, just not the same mother) but mentions nothing about her being his wife.  Once again God intervenes and Sarah is saved. 

As a wife, I cannot imagine how hard this was for Sarah.  Abraham was supposed to be her protector and all he could think about was himself.  But Sarah knew something that most of us do not.  And that is that our hope cannot be in man(people), whether that man is our husband, our pastors, elders, deacons, our hope must only be in God.  Then we can do what is right without being frighened by fear.  If I put my hope in man I will be disappointed, because the only perfect man is Jesus Christ.

I know that the leaders of our church will make mistakes, they're human, but more importantly I know that God will do what is right even if mistakes or bad decisions are made.  My hope is in God even when I don't understand.