Let's Laugh!

Let’s Laugh!

Gen. 18:1-5

Abraham sees “three men” approaching – not realizing at the time it actually was The Lord and two angels. (It was only much later that Abraham realized who he was talking to.) Abraham greets the three men with supreme courtesy as he runs to meet them bowing low to the ground. He addresses one of them as “My Lord”, he refers to himself twice as their servant, and he urges them to stop and rest, while he goes to get water and bread for them – meaning he rushes into the tent to find his wife, Sarah, saying; “Quick! Three measures of best flour! Knead it and make cakes and roast the calf from my herd!”

Sarah does not speak. She remains on the outskirts of the action, hidden from the view of the men, as tradition dictated. So far, so good? Then suddenly the conversation becomes mysterious when one of the three men asks “Where is your wife Sarah?” How do they know her name? Abraham couldn’t have possibly known at this point that these men were The Lord with two angels - nevertheless he doesn’t seem surprised at all. “There in the tent”, he says, not wondering why his guests should inquire after his wife.

Now . . . we begin to think that Sarah might be closer to the centre of this story than many would have thought, even though we cannot see her, hidden away as she is in the tent.

Has God come about Sarah this time? Has the Lord who had paid Abraham so much attention now be turning His eyes to Sarah?

God – as one of the three – says; “I will surely return to you in due season, and your wife Sarah will have a son.” So, now the spotlight swings round, and for the first time it is Sarah who is caught in its beam.

“And Sarah was listening at the entrance behind Him. Now they were old, advanced in age, it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women…So Sarah laughed to herself.”

Sarah had heard everything. What else could she do but laugh? . . . . Cry out? . . . Argue? . . . How could she do what she’d never done all her life? “Worn out as I am,” Sarah says.

Sarah had been waiting years and years to hear this news. And even now she has to overhear it. It’s only by accident that she learns that she will finally have the long desired baby…that she has her own contribution to make to Abraham’s heritage.

Her laughter is understandable. Sarah is past the time of child-bearing and the Bible gives a fairly broad hint that Abraham and Sarah’s physical relationship was ancient history. And, yet, the simple question was asked, " is anything too hard for God?"

Where is their faith? Where was their trust in God in the working of miracles? Have all their senses hardened and their hopes vanished in the decades of demands and disappointments?

And then all of a sudden Sarah is all ears, when she hears one of the Men say: “Why did Sarah laugh?” How could He have known her thoughts? Who were those Men? How did they know them?

And then Sarah brings herself out into the open. “I did not laugh,” she says, for she was afraid. And the Man simply responds: “Oh yes, you did laugh (and that’s ok!)”

Contrary to what I have always heard about “Sarah laughing – i.e.; that she was laughing ‘at’ God in sarcasm and contempt → I love the fact that The Lord here didn’t reprimand her or blame her for having tried to hide her reaction to something she took as amusing enough to bring her laughter and, probably, brought a lightness to her weary soul. He only confirms that she has laughed.

Sarah tries to withdraw her laughter, but The Lord is not having any of that! . . . . He tells her that the son who is to be born to her will be called Isaac – which is Hebrew for “God laughs”.

Laughter was what changed Sarah’s whole life.