Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, had borne him no children. And she had an Egyptian maidservant whose name was Hagar. So Sarai said to Abram, “See now, the Lord has restrained me from bearing children. Please, go in to my maid; perhaps I shall obtain children by her.” (Gen 16,1-2)

Abram's fall into the depths of unbelief did not come all of a sudden. We can assume that the expectation and effort to stay on what he believed lasted for at least months after the first covenant was made. But then the seed of doubt took root and bore its fruit, first with Sarah, who was not directly involved in Abram's encounters with God. Her reasoning, therefore, did not spring from a transformed mind; she did not experience the same heights with him. She looks at the problem quite pragmatically and is the first to make her point clear: this way with God does not lead to the goal. Let us then make other arrangements.

The problem with believers is that they are often idealistic where they should be pragmatic, and pragmatic where they should be idealistic. They try to hold on by faith to things that God has not promised (or maybe not in that particular way) at all, and which therefore cannot work, whereas they neglect things where they would honor God by their faith. Faith is always a struggle between the real and the expected, a struggle in which God will stand by us if we seek Him. It's a tension between promise and reality that is refined not only through the reality, but (as in this case) often through the matter of time.

We need to be vigilant in the moments when unbelief begins to echo in the form of feelings of disappointment, as with Sarah ("the Lord has not granted me..."). Instead of faith, one activates logic and finds many reasonable-looking solutions, none of which will lead to the true goal in the end. On the contrary, as with Abram, it makes his path considerably more complicated.