Sing, O Barren One | Sermon | The Grove Church, Port St. Lucie

How to Cast Out What’s Keeping You from the Good Life

The good life cannot be earned by keeping rules or by the strength of your own believing; it can only be received as a gift from a God who brings life out of death.

Summary

In Galatians 4:21-31 Paul sets two barren things side by side, Sarah’s womb and a Jerusalem emptied by exile, and argues that both are what self-reliance finally produces. David Hancock, pastor of The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, traces the pattern back to Genesis: God does not insert life into emptiness from outside but draws it out of the void, as He did at creation, in Sarah’s old age, and at the empty tomb. The claim is that the good life cannot be earned by keeping rules or by the strength of a person’s own believing; it can only be received as a gift. Paul’s picture of that trust, borrowed from Isaiah, is a command to sing while the land is still empty.

Key Takeaways

The inheritance Scripture calls the good life is received as a gift and is never earned by moral performance.
Sarah conceived after laughing at God’s promise, which means the promise never depended on the quality of her faith.
Paul’s command to cast out the slave woman is a command to throw out self-reliance, not a judgment on Hagar’s worth.
Trusting God’s promise looks like singing in a barren season rather than waiting for the conditions to improve first.

Read Galatians 4:21-31 (ESV)

Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.” Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman. (Galatians 4:21–31, ESV)

Talk about it

1. Think of something you have waited a long time for and are still waiting for. What have you tried to do to speed it up?

The Barren Womb: Why Does God Take So Long to Keep His Promises?

Paul opens with a piece of wordplay that does not survive translation. He asks the Galatians who want to be under the law whether they have listened to the law, using one English word for two different things: the rules a person keeps, and the first five books of Scripture. His point is that the Scriptures themselves never taught that rule-keeping delivers the inheritance. To prove it he goes back to Abraham and Sarah. God had promised them a land, a family more numerous than the stars, and a blessing that would reach every family on earth. Then Sarah’s womb stayed empty year after year, and the promise began to look like a joke told at her expense. She eventually laughed in God’s presence at the idea that He could still do it. Her posture toward hope had become the one many people quietly adopt: expect the worst and you will never be disappointed.

So she stopped waiting. She handed her servant Hagar to Abraham and manufactured the child God had promised to give. That move, from trusting to strategizing, is what Paul is pointing at. Generations later the same instinct had emptied Jerusalem itself; a nation that tried to secure the promise by its own performance ended up in exile, looking back at a barren land. Paul calls this the present Jerusalem, and he means anyone who relies on a moral code or a religious system to reach the good life. It is the most respectable way in the world to end up with nothing.

Tohu wa bohu: Tohu wa bohu is the Hebrew phrase in Genesis 1:2 translated “without form and void.” It describes not simple emptiness but a churning, watery chaos that swallows things. Genesis says God did not insert life into that void from outside; He spoke, and light and beauty came out of it. God draws life out of death rather than adding it.

Hagar: Hagar was Sarah’s Egyptian slave. In the ancient Near East a childless wife could legally give her servant to her husband and claim the resulting child as her own; it was a recognized arrangement, not a scandal. Sarah used it and Hagar bore Ishmael. Paul reads Hagar as a picture of the law, a promise obtained by human means.

Talk about it

2. Sarah’s rule for hope was to expect the worst so she would never be disappointed. Where do you run that same rule, and what is it protecting you from feeling?

3. Sarah did not abandon the promise; she tried to produce it herself. Name one place where you are managing an outcome you were asked to wait for. What would it actually cost you to stop?

Cast Out the Slave Woman: What Does Galatians 4:30 Mean?

Paul’s instruction is blunt. Cast out the slave woman, he says, quoting Genesis. He is not passing judgment on Hagar’s worth; he is telling the Galatians to throw out the entire approach she represents, the deadly doing, the moral strategizing, the quiet accounting by which a person informs God that He now owes them the good life. But the sermon presses further than most readings go. The obvious next move is to work harder at faith instead of at the law, and that is a mistake. Sarah laughed in God’s face and conceived anyway. God did not open her womb because her believing had finally reached a passing grade. So what has to be cast out is not only law-keeping; it is faith in your own faith. A person is not saved by the quality of their believing but by the quality of the One believed. And the trust Paul has in mind, borrowed from Isaiah, is not gritted teeth. It is singing; singing in exile, while the land is still empty, because God is already composing something out of the void.

Isaiah 54:1: “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear; break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married.” Isaiah wrote this to Israelites living in exile, with Jerusalem in ruins behind them. The command is not to sing once the situation improves; it is to sing while it is still ruined, on the grounds that God has promised to fill what is empty. Singing is what trust looks like before the evidence arrives.

Talk about it

4. The sermon distinguishes faith in God’s promise from faith in your own faith. When you doubt, do you go looking at God’s track record or at the strength of your believing? What does that habit produce in you?

Two Comfortable Mistakes: Why Is Trusting God Harder Than Trying Harder?

Both mistakes are comfortable, which is why they last so long. Rule-keeping comforts a person because it feels like leverage; if the terms are met, God can be held to a schedule. It also flatters, because it makes the rule-keeper the hero of the story, and that title belongs to Christ. Faith in one’s own faith comforts in exactly the same way and hides better, since it wears spiritual clothing; if enough belief can be summoned, the timing can still be forced. Both breed pride, and both are unmasked at the same moment, when the promise runs late and the person who thought God owed them turns on Him. The alternative is not passivity. It is resting, waiting, and singing while the answer is nowhere in sight: in loneliness, in anxiety, in a house where someone you love is far from God, in the face of death itself.

Talk about it

5. Which of the two mistakes is yours: earning the good life by being good, or measuring whether your faith is strong enough? Be specific about how it showed up this week.

6. Self-reliance is comfortable because it feels like control over God’s timing. What have you decided God owes you, and what comes out of you when it does not arrive?

The Heart of It: What Did Christ Endure in the Void for You?

Abraham was called out into the unknown, and so was Jesus. Before His ministry began He went into the wilderness, into the barren waste, and there, weak with hunger, He was offered three ways to skip the wait: bread now, a kingdom now, proof now. He cast out every one of them. In the garden He asked the Father for another way and then trusted Him at the edge of the darkness He was about to enter. On the cross He went into the void itself, the full chaos of death, and there He found us and held us, and the Father raised Him and raised us with Him into new life. Isaac was born when hope had run out. The Savior appeared the same way, at the last moment, when all hope seemed lost. Everything He refused to seize, He received from His Father, and He hands it to people who bring nothing to the exchange.

Genesis 15: Abraham asked how he could trust God’s promise of land and family while Sarah stayed childless. God answered with a covenant ceremony: animals cut in half, and God alone passing between the pieces as a burning torch. Walking between the pieces invoked that same fate on yourself if you broke the agreement. God was pledging the promise even at the cost of His life.

Talk about it

7. Christ refused every shortcut out of the void and waited on His Father, and the good life came out of His death. If He is what God gives to people who bring nothing, what are you still trying to bring?

Questions This Sermon Answers

What does tohu wa bohu mean in Genesis 1:2?

Tohu wa bohu is the Hebrew phrase in Genesis 1:2 translated “without form and void.” It describes not simple emptiness but a churning, watery chaos that swallows things. Genesis says God did not insert life into that void from outside; He spoke, and light and beauty came out of it. God draws life out of death rather than adding it.

Who was Hagar and why does Paul use her in Galatians 4?

Hagar was Sarah’s Egyptian slave. In the ancient Near East a childless wife could legally give her servant to her husband and claim the resulting child as her own; it was a recognized arrangement, not a scandal. Sarah used it and Hagar bore Ishmael. Paul reads Hagar as a picture of the law, a promise obtained by human means.

What does Galatians 4:30 mean by cast out the slave woman?

Paul is not passing judgment on Hagar’s worth; he is telling Christians to throw out the entire approach she represents. Cast out the moral strategizing by which a person keeps rules in order to inform God that He now owes them the good life. What replaces it is trust in a promise God has already made.

What does Isaiah 54:1 mean when it says sing, O barren one?

Isaiah wrote this to Israelites living in exile, with Jerusalem in ruins behind them. The command is not to sing once the situation improves; it is to sing while it is still ruined, on the grounds that God has promised to fill what is empty. Singing is what trust looks like before the evidence arrives.

What did God promise Abraham in Genesis 15?

Abraham asked how he could trust God’s promise of land and family while Sarah stayed childless. God answered with a covenant ceremony: animals cut in half, and God alone passing between the pieces as a burning torch. Walking between the pieces invoked that same fate on yourself if you broke the agreement. God was pledging the promise even at the cost of His life.

What is the difference between faith in God and faith in your own faith?

Faith in God rests on the promise and on the character of the One who made it. Faith in your own faith measures your believing and treats its strength as the reason God should act. Sarah laughed at the promise and conceived anyway, which means the outcome never depended on the quality of her faith.

Vision for the Christian Life

The Christian life this passage envisions is one that has stopped manufacturing the promise. It is not passive and it is not resigned; it is the ability to rest while the answer is late, and to sing in a barren season, because the God who drew light out of chaos and a son out of a dead womb has never yet abandoned a promise. That life is slower and quieter than the one self-reliance advertises, and it is the only one that ever actually arrives.

Discussion Questions for Small Groups: Galatians 4

Think of something you have waited a long time for and are still waiting for. What have you tried to do to speed it up?
Sarah’s rule for hope was to expect the worst so she would never be disappointed. Where do you run that same rule, and what is it protecting you from feeling?
Sarah did not abandon the promise; she tried to produce it herself. Name one place where you are managing an outcome you were asked to wait for. What would it actually cost you to stop?
The sermon distinguishes faith in God’s promise from faith in your own faith. When you doubt, do you go looking at God’s track record or at the strength of your believing? What does that habit produce in you?
Which of the two mistakes is yours: earning the good life by being good, or measuring whether your faith is strong enough? Be specific about how it showed up this week.
Self-reliance is comfortable because it feels like control over God’s timing. What have you decided God owes you, and what comes out of you when it does not arrive?
Christ refused every shortcut out of the void and waited on His Father, and the good life came out of His death. If He is what God gives to people who bring nothing, what are you still trying to bring?

Related Messages in This Series

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Pastor David Hancock is the Lead Pastor of The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, FL, a church where believers and skeptics wrestle honestly with faith and doubt.

Wrestling with a question this raised? You can text in your question on any Sunday and hear it answered after the sermon. Or come sit with people asking the same things. Plan Your Visit

Read the full sermon manuscript

We are all chasing the good life: A home, with our people, and a life filled with love, joy, and peace. But what happens when this good life doesn’t come on our timeline, or never comes the way we hoped? This is when our scheming begins. We reach for ways to be in control, to manipulate our world, and strategize to get the life we are after. Today we discover that scripture teaches that our efforts to attain the good life by self-reliance make it barren in us. Now, how could this be? Doesn’t God reward hard work? Yes, but today we discover the good life we truly want can’t be earned; it must be received as a gift. That is one of the hardest things you will ever do, because it requires waiting for God and trusting in His timing.

We are in our series called Christian freedom in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Today my goal is for all of us to cast out every effort we are using to get to the good life, and learn to wait and trust, not in ourselves but in God.

“Tell me, you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law? For it is written that Abraham had two sons, one by a slave woman and one by a free woman. But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise. Now this may be interpreted allegorically: these women are two covenants. One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children. But the Jerusalem above is free, and she is our mother. For it is written, “Rejoice, O barren one who does not bear; break forth and cry aloud, you who are not in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than those of the one who has a husband.” Now you, brothers, like Isaac, are children of promise. But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now. But what does the Scripture say? “Cast out the slave woman and her son, for the son of the slave woman shall not inherit with the son of the free woman.” So, brothers, we are not children of the slave but of the free woman.” (Galatians 4:21–31, ESV)

Paul flexes at the Galatians and opens with wordplay. He asks, “you who desire to be under the law, do you not listen to the law?” Hidden in the original language are two words disguised as one in English: law. Here is the proper way to hear the question: “You who desire to be under the law (as rules and commandments), do you not listen to the law (as Torah or 1st 5 books of the bible).

In other words: You rule followers who think you get the good life by following the rules have you not read the Scriptures? He is implying that rule following was never going to get you the good life. Then he gives two images to prove it.

1st Paul takes us to the Story of Abraham and Sarah.

God tells Abraham to go get the good life, what Pauls in verse 30, the inheritance. God says go to the land I will show you. The land we are thinking of is Eden.

On their pilgrimage, God says to Abraham, look up at the stars; your children will be more than the stars of the sky. And through you, all the families of the earth will be blessed. You will be the father of the nations.

In other words, not only will you have the good life of a home, family with joy, peace, and love; but the world will have the good life because of you. A world of friends who are like family.

To say it another way: Abraham is about to be blessed by God to be a blessing to the world.

But on their travels, a serious problem threatens their hope.

Sarah can’t get pregnant. Her womb is barren.

Abraham cries out to God: How can I trust this promise of the land, people, and blessing if Sarah can’t even have one child?

God’s answer in Genesis 15 is shocking. God makes a promise: no matter what, even if it costs me my life, I’ll make sure the promise comes true.

Abraham’s faith is built back up, but he and especially Sarah, perhaps because she wasn’t there for the promise, struggle with doubt.

Sarah, at some point, laughs in God’s presence after he confirms His promise that Sarah will have a child.

It’s laughable to her that God can or would do this at her age.

Her relationship with hope in God is this: Expect the worst and you won’t be disappointed.

But Sarah has all that she needs to hope with confidence. Why? All she has to do is look back at creation.

In the beginning, in Genesis 1:2, we see the earth was “without form and void.” This is a Hebrew phrase that is really fun for my kids to say in Hebrew: “Toh-HOO vah-VOH-hoou”. It’s kinda fun for me too.

The picture is of a chaotic emptiness, swirling around. It’s a void; it means both nothingness, but like a chaotic nothingness. A watery wasteland that will swallow you up into death. A black hole of chaos.

At creation, God speaks; or as some believe, because of the poetic cadence of Genesis 1, that perhaps God sang creation into existence. If so, His golden voice rang into the void, “Let there be light.” From the divine song, beauty came out of the chaos; life came out of the dark void.

It’s not that he inserted life and beauty into it, it’s that he brought life and beauty out of it. That’s an important distinction. It’s the pattern of God’s redemption.

Sarah’s womb is the barren void. God’s pattern is to bring light into the darkness, and beauty out of chaos, life out of death. If this is what God did at creation, surely he can bring life into Sarah’s womb of toh-HOO vah-VOH-hoo.

But it’s taking to long and all hope seems lost so Abraham and Sarah start doing what we all do. They doubt. Perhaps they said, “Maybe God didn’t mean what we thought. Maybe I did something wrong, and that’s why it hasn’t come. Or maybe I need to take this into my own hands because God doesn’t care for me.”

Sarah, desperate to have a child and tired of waiting for God, doubting any of it will actually happen, says to Abraham, we have Hagar, our servant; I’m sure she fancies you. How about you get with her, and she can have our child.

Abraham doesn’t argue with her.

What they have just done? They moved from trust to strategy, from waiting to taking matters into their own hands. From faith to manufacturing the promise.

Hagar has a child, Ishmael. As Paul calls him, the son of the slave woman.

Why is Paul telling this story? Well, he compares Hagar and her son with the law that was given on mount Siani. That is the rules, the commandments to follow.

At first it seems like a strange allegorical interpretation. But it makes sense.

Sarah is taking matters into her own hands and using her slave woman to get what she wants. She is relying on normal means that don’t require God or waiting for Him.

That same thing has shown up in Galatia. A group of traveling teachers came in and convinced them that if they want the good life, they must rely on their ability to keep the law. Paul calls those who teach this, persecutors of Christianity, mocking grace and favoring trust in the self.

Paul’s point through this letter is that law-keeping was never the way to get the inheritance or good life. Mock Christianity as much as you want, this is the claim.

The law, though beautiful, imprisons everything.

It says the son of the slave woman is born of the flesh. This is a way of saying rely on human means, not trust in God’s creative acts.

Generations later, following the same paths of seeking the good life by human means the whole nation of Israel finds themselves in exile and Jerusalem, the promise land they once inhabited was empty, void, or as Paul says barren.

Toh-HOO vah VOH-hoou.

Paul, quoting Isaiah, compares Jerusalem to the barren womb.

Paul has just given us two images: a barren woman and a barren land.

Paul explains that this is the pattern in the present Jerusalem. It’s life in the void because humanity adopted the strategy of using the law, to get to the good life, but it only led to the void.

Let me help this make sense to you today. The present Jerusalem is anyone who relies on some type of moral code, or religious system to get to the good life.

This is most of the world. Most people say, if someone is a good person, tries hard, and the good outweighs the bad, then of course God will love and accept them and give them the good life.

Paul says this kind of thinking leads to a barren life. Why?

You are trusting in your own efforts, strategy, and ability. And you are using the law as means to bring life out of death, beauty out of chaos, and light into the darkness.

This is what upsets people about Christianity: life and beauty can’t come from your law-keeping or following the rules; in fact, your reliance on your goodness only leads to barrenness.

Paul’s whole point is that only God can bring beauty out of chaos and life out of death.

Paul’s advice then is cast out the slave woman.

With Paul’s analogy, he means: cast out your deadly doing, your law-keeping, your strategizing through moral effort to gain the high ground and say to God that he owes you the good life.

When Paul says cast out the slave woman he is saying, look at Sarah, this is where self-reliance leads, to scheming and acting in ways that show you don’t trust God.

Cast out that way of living. Instead, trust that if God makes a promise, He will keep it, even if it costs Him His life.

There is a deeper meaning here that most people don’t see.

We think, okay so the answer is to work on my faith and not trust on the law.

That would be a mistake.

Look at Sarah; she literally laughed in God’s face when he told Abraham she would conceive, yet she still became pregnant and finally had her son Issac.

You need to notice this. God didn’t make Sarah pregnant because of how faithful she was. Sarah doubted and the promise came anyway.

I’m not saying faith isn’t important. I’m saying don’t but your faith in your faith but put your faith in the promise of God.

You aren’t saved by the quality of your faith but the quality of the one you put your faith in.

So you aren’t just supposed to cast out the law.

You are supposed to cast out your faith in your faith.

Paul, quoting Isaiah shows us what faith in the promises of God not faith in our faith is supposed to look like. It looks like singing in exile.

Paul quotes Isaiah, let me read it to you from Isaiah so you don’t miss the singing aspect. “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear, break forth into singing and cry aloud, you who have not been in labor! For the children of the desolate one will be more than the children of her who is married.”

This means, well, God’s people were in exile, and Jerusalem is barren, but sing, because God is going to do a greater work, and there will soon be more life in you than there was when you were in Jerusalem.

The exiles were still sitting in the wreckage while the land of Jerusalem was barren and God commanded them to sing.

God is saying sing while in you are in toh-HOO vah-VOH-hoo.

Sing while your life feels like it’s falling apart.

Sing when all of the promises of God seem far off.

Sing when the good life feels far off.

Why? Because God is singing a new creation into your barren life.

While you feel like God’s promise will never come, like Sarah, sing with shouts of joy because you have a God who keeps His promises.

Years later, Sarah would finally have Isaac, who would have Jacob, whose name would be changed to Israel, and finally they would become the great nation God promised.

God always answers when all hope seems lost.

After all, he brings beauty out of chaos, and life out of death.

Some of you here are trying to find the inheritance, the good life by following the laws, being good, and trying hard. This only digs you further into the barren life.

Some of you here are trying to find the inheritance and good life by trusting in your own faith. This, surprisingly, is a false Christianity. You aren’t looking at God’s promise but your faith. You are putting your trust in your faith. Some of you think you are Christians, but you aren’t because you keep looking at yourself instead of Christ.

Should you look at the quality of your faith? Yes, but not as a means to salvation; in fact, the more you look at yourself and your faith, the more you fall back into the void.

Strong faith doesn’t come by looking at your faith but by looking at the faithfulness of God.

Here are the two common mistakes we make that lead to barrenness.

The first mistake is we do what Sarah did. We start to doubt God’s timing and say, “Is this really going to happen for me?” So we take matters into our own hands and trust in our ways and our ability to bring life into death. We chase law-keeping as the path, but it leads to the void.

The 2nd mistake is a subtler trap. After we stop relying on the law, we start relying on our own faith. Not faith in God’s promises but faith in our faith.

We move from trust in our effort to relying on the purity of our faith. That’s not law-keeping anymore but still self-reliance wearing a spiritual coat.

Cast these out.

The choice is self-effort or trust in God’s promises. Pick trust.

This will be hard for you. You have been operating with self-reliance for all your life. It’s comfortable and it’s made you prideful.

Keeping the law comforts you because it makes you feel like you can control God’s timing and secure the good life. But when it doesn’t come, that’s when you start rebelling against God. Little do you know, you were rebelling the whole time, it was just coated in law keeping. Law-keeping to avoid waiting on God. It makes you feel like you can control God, because if you keep the law, you can tell him he owes you, and owes you now.

This also makes you feel prideful, like there is something special about you, like you are able to do what others aren’t. It makes you the hero. And you must cast yourself out as the hero. That title belongs to Christ.

You have also taken comfort and become prideful by looking at the quality of your faith.

Comfort in the quality of your faith because you can control it; then you can force God’s timing if you believe enough. And that’s why some of you are about to turn on God, because you think, by the quality of your faith he owes you something, that you deserve your life to go the way you want it to, and that’s not how God works. You will be surprised at how fragile your faith is when it’s about faith in your faith.

You will also find yourself becoming prideful, looking at your faith and comparing it to others, as if you are special, better, or that God is lucky to have someone like you.

Instead, cast out all law-keeping and faith in your own faith, and put all your trust in the promises of God.

And at the perfect moment, God’s promises of the land, people, and blessing- the promise of the inheritance, of the good life will come.

Does your life feel barren right now? The temptation is to try to obey more or believe more as a way to force God to give you what you want. This won’t work.

Instead, practice resting and waiting on God, even when the promise feels far off, even when it seems like the promise is impossible, the way it felt to Sarah.

When God seems like a myth, when Christianity feels like it’s overpromised, wait and rest on the promises of God.

When you feel lonely and rejected, sing O barren one; look at God’s promises, what he has done and will do. He brought life out of death, light into darkness, and beauty out of chaos, and He will bring love into your fear of rejection and loneliness.

When you feel anxious and fearful, sing O barren one; look at God’s promises, what he has done and will do. He brought life out of death, light into darkness, and beauty out of chaos and He will bring peace into the chaos that causes you fear.

When you feel hopeless and depressed, sing O barren one; He will bring hope and joy into your barren heart.

When your spouse or children are far off from God, and you are praying and praying but nothing is changing, sing O barren one.

When you or someone you love is facing death, sing O barren one; He came into the void of death and won.

Like God called Abraham to go into the unknown, to go into the wilderness, chaos, and void. So God called Jesus to do the same.

Before Jesus started His ministry he went into the wilderness, into the barren waste, into the toh-HOO vah-VOH-hoo

There he fasted; his belly was barren, and in the void, while he was void of strength, he was tempted in three ways by Satan, to skip the wait. To turn stones into bread and fill his belly, to receive the kingdom now instead of waiting for what he had to endure, and last to throw himself from the temple and let the angels save him in front of everyone, so it would be instant proof that of who He is, instead of waiting for the Father to raise Him from death.

But he cast out every temptation.

In the garden before the cross, He pleaded with the Father, let this cup pass from me, let me take the easy way out, but your will be done. He trusted the Father at the edge of the toh-HOO vah-VOH-hoo he was about to enter.

ON the cross he entered the full horror of the void, the darkness, the complete toh-HOO vah-VOH-hoo, the watery waste of death.

There he found us waiting, not trusting in the law, not in our own faith, but our faith in Him, and He held us in the barren waste and perhaps, in the same Creation was sang into existence, perhaps in the same way the Father raised Christ and us with Him in song into new life.

The same way Isaac was finally born when all hope seemed lost, so also finally, at the last moment, when all hope seemed lost, our Savior appeared and raised us up into new life.

Keep waiting and hoping in the promises of God, no matter what the barren life you live looks like. He is coming and will bring light into the darkness, beauty out of the chaos, and the good life out of death.