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Once upon a time, I was very, very unhappy. As I studied my scriptures that night, I came across Genesis 17:15, which says, “And God said unto Abraham, As for Sarai thy wife, thou shalt not call her name Sarai, but Sarah shall her name be.” I checked the footnote for ‘Sarah,’ and discovered that Sarai’s new name means Princess. I stared at the page for a few minutes, then checked again to be sure I hadn’t read it wrong. There it was again. Princess.
Princess. Notice Sarah’s circumstances at this time: unable to bear children, she has given her handmaiden to Abraham so that he could raise up seed. After conceiving, the scriptures say that “her mistress (Sarah) was despised in her eyes.” She has been traveling with and following her husband, and remember that culturally, her position as a woman was to bear and raise children. Probably, she felt that she had failed; I wonder if she even doubted her own worth. And yet, the scriptures record that instead of cursing and wailing and bemoaning her fate, she says, “the Lord hath restrained me from bearing,” and then she gives Abraham her maid. In essence, I think she is saying, “it’s in God’s hands. I don’t understand, but I believe in Him and I will follow Him.”
Sarah was a remarkable woman. So much so, that we know her by name. Think of the few woman in the scriptures that we have this much information about. Sarah was not a failure, and she certainly did not achieve worth only when she conceived and bore Isaac. The Lord changes her name to Sarah, princess, before she becomes pregnant. Sarah was a princess because of the person she was in her heart, and the faithful way she chose to act. She was a princess because she was a daughter of God and she rose to that calling.
God changed Sarah’s name very literally. But I believe that all of us, royal daughters, can have our hearts changed as we take His name upon us and believe in Him. Believe that our worth isn’t measured by the number of children we have or don’t have, the size of our waists, or the presentation of the face looking back at us in the mirror.
Who are you?
A princess.
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