For Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the set time of which God had spoken to him. (Gen 21,2)

We have already said that Abraham did not come to know God through a theological approach, that is, through book study, knowledge and understanding, but through experiences that came as he walked the path of his life. He didn't study articles of faith, but practically grew in it; he didn't read books on intercession, and yet became one of the greatest intercessors; he didn't download sermons how to get blessings in his job, but practically experienced how God provided for his job as he sought the way for his farm and his community. His knowledge of God was thus brought to him by the specific situations he was exposed to. Or, better said, it was always first a lack, a crisis in which he had to seek God and take the right attitude. Having taken it, he received the blessing in that area of his life. Nothing has changed in this way of God's dealings with man over the next thousand years. We may learn about God through theological understanding, but our lives as such may be virtually unaffected. However, experiencing the depths, the crisis in which we must find God's way forward, truly transforms us and places us under the blessed hand of God. It is not a cheap and always pleasant way, but it is an unchangeable spiritual pattern: without such an inner transformation one cannot ascend permanently higher.

As we have already noted, Abraham was in some danger in Gerar, and he preferred to help himself with a half-truth. He may not have passed with flying colours, but at the same time it cannot be said that he deliberately intended to commit evil, and therefore God did not judge him. This situation eventually brought him a new experience: not only did God intervene on his behalf, but He ultimately affirmed Abraham by having him pray for the women of Abimelech's house who were afflicted with barrenness.

All of this only reinforces the principle described above: had it not been for this experience, Abraham would not have experienced how God heals even physical diseases, namely the one that troubled him most: infertility! He legitimately thought: if God healed infertility in idolaters... why couldn't the same thing happen to his own wife?

Often over the past 25 years, he had waged a struggle of faith in which he had both waxed and waned. For so many years he had hoped for the birth of his own son that it sometimes seemed like a distant idea, a fading hope. But never before had he felt so close and tangible an experience of his God miraculously healing infertility, and this literally through him.

Now there was no time for doubt; at 99 years old, he was experiencing the distant, perishable hope being transformed into a certainty: his God could do it, of course - for him, right here, right now.