Pastor Lester Bentley

A Different Kind of Love Story

Everyone loves a love story.

Guy meets girl. Girl meets guy. They date, fall in love, marry, and live happily ever after. It is the storyline of countless books and films—a familiar rhythm that comforts us because it feels complete.

But the story of Abraham and Sarah is not that kind of love story.

It is far more complex.

I have always found their relationship both compelling and troubling. Abraham is celebrated for his faith, yet woven into that faith are moments where Sarah seems almost expendable—twice placed in danger to preserve his own safety. At times, it appears as though Abraham views the covenant promise as something centered primarily on himself, rather than something that includes Sarah as an equal partner in God’s plan.

And then there is Sarah’s side of the story.

I have tried to imagine it, though I do so cautiously. I am not a woman, and I cannot fully inhabit her experience. Yet Genesis 11:30 paints her reality in stark, almost clinical language:

“But Sarai was barren; she had no child.”

In a world where identity, security, and honor were tied to posterity, barrenness was more than a private sorrow. It was a public verdict. In the ancient Near East, childlessness suggested that the gods were not smiling upon you. It carried social shame and spiritual stigma.

And this is the woman at the center of God’s unfolding covenant story.

We must not forget where Abram came from. He was raised in an idol-worshiping household in the land of the Chaldeans, in the city of Ur. Genesis 12:1–3 records the divine interruption. The LORD calls Abram to leave everything familiar—his land, his family, his security—and to go to a land that God would show him.

Somehow, someway, God saw something in Abram—a diamond in the rough. And He made him a staggering promise:

“In you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

Yet just one verse earlier, God tells this childless man:

“I will make you a great nation.”

There is a holy irony here. A man with no heir is promised descendants beyond counting. A barren couple is told they will shape the destiny of nations.

God seems to delight in beginning where human possibility ends.

And consider the geography. Not far from Ur stood the memory of another human ambition—the tower of Babel. Humanity had tried to build a name for itself, to ascend by its own ingenuity. The result was confusion and scattering.

From the ruins of Babel, God calls one family.

Not to build a tower.
Not to make a name for themselves.
But to become a blessing to the whole world.

Where humanity sought greatness through self-exaltation, God begins redemption through dependence.

And at the center of it all stands Sarah—a barren woman who does not yet know that her womb will become the stage upon which God’s faithfulness is displayed.

This is not a fairy-tale love story.

It is a covenant story.
A story of weakness and promise.
Of fear and faith.
Of human frailty and divine humor.

And it begins not with strength—but with barrenness.