“Some things are hard to believe”

By Rev. Michael Stonhouse

Meditation – Sunday, July 17, 2022

Genesis 18:1-15 (Forward, p. 80) CEV p. 15

I hardly blame Sarah, the wife of Abraham, of having a little chuckle at the mere prospect of she and Abraham bearing a son in their old age. After all, they had tried and tried, and all of it had been in vain. Now they were pretty well resigned to the almost undeniable fact that they would never have children. But then God comes along and says otherwise. Yes, it is hard to believe—in fact, totally unbelievable. No wonder Sarah laughed. I think that we would as well.

We often say, and say rather glibly, that God can do anything, but in reality we don’t take that proposition very seriously. We decide for ourselves that some things simply won’t happen, God’s intervention or not. Take, for instance, a peaceful solution in Ukraine, one that respects their territorial sovereignty and integrity and their self-determination. Or take the political divide, the polarization, that we now find both in the United States and Canada. Or think of the decline of many of our mainline churches. Yes,

God ‘could’ intervene and make a difference, but we hardly expect that He would do so. In fact, if He made a promise to that effect, we’d probably laugh to ourselves, even as Sarah did. The problem is that, in spite of our protestations to the contrary, we don’t really believe either that God can do it or that He will. “Oh, ye of little faith.” Yes, that could be said of most of us. So, like the harried father of that demonically inflicted boy (Mark 9:24), we need to cry out, “Lord, I do believe. Help my unbelief”. Amen.

Forward notes: “So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, ‘After I have grown old, and my husband is old, shall I have pleasure?’” (verse 12)

“Laughter is a funny thing because it is not always about funny things.

“We laugh at hilarious jokes or stories. But we can just as quickly laugh at an awkward moment or out of embarrassment, nervousness, shock. With all due respect to Freud, sometimes a laugh is not just a laugh.

“I’ve always felt for Sarah in this moment. If you picture the players, none of these mysterious guests should even be able to hear her. The idea that a couple as old as Sarah and Abraham should finally have a baby is funny.

I don’t know if there are words enough to capture the swirl of emotions Sarah must have felt. Who wouldn’t laugh?

“But she feels chastened for her laughter pretty quickly, and ‘Sarah’s laugh’ can be a bit of a shorthand for faithlessness. But for us, her fellow fragile humans, who laugh at so many things, maybe Sarah’s laugh is another way to grasp the unbelievable miracle of what God is about to do.”

MOVING FORWARD: “When have you laughed, as Sarah did, only to be surprised by God?”