After Abram experienced the dizzying heights of the events on Genesis 15, he came crashing back to earth and reality in Genesis 16:1-16. Though God had promised Abram a great nation of descendants, he and his wife Sarai (at her instigation) concocted a plan for Abram to father a child through Sarai’s slave girl Hagar. Sadly, the plan they concocted wasn’t the plan God had in mind for the fulfillment of the promises He had in mind in chapter 12. When it comes to taking ‘matters into our own hands’, the lessons we learn from the chapter are sobering.