This story should serve as a reminder to us of the danger of getting ahead of God. I mean, Sarah had been promised by the Angel of the Lord, that she would have a baby. But it did not happen fast enough for Sarah, she became impatient and took things into her own hands. So she gave her maidservant, Hagar to her husband to be his second wife, to give her a family. First off, I have to say, what was she thinking? She allowed her desire to have children overrun her desire to please God and wait for His perfect will. And look what happened, her maidservant rubbed it in her face that she had a child and Sarah didn't, so Sarah retaliated by treating her badly and abusing her. And not only that, it says that Ishmael, the offspring of Sarah's bad choice, was to be a man who would be like a wild horse, constantly fighting and being fought against. And Ishmael is the father of the Palestinian nation. Muslims are his offspring, and they fight against each other, and the rest of the world. THat is the danger of getting ahead of GOd. There are always unforeseen consequences that we cannot predict. All we can see is what we want, and what we perceive to be good for us at the time. We get impatient waiting for God's will and take things into our own hands. But what ends up happening is we cause pain somewhere down the road, when if we had waited for God, all that pain could have been avoided. Sure it might take some time for God's will to be accomplished, but wouldn't it be better to wait and not get ahead of God than to produce many more "Ishmael's" in our life?