Sarah Laughed At God’s Impossible Promise; God Named A Child After It

There’s a woman in Genesis 18 who laughed at the impossible promise.

God heard the laugh.

Named the child after it.

And then, she lied about it when God asked why she laughed. “I didn’t laugh.”

God didn’t give her a consequence, and God didn’t take the promise away. Instead, he delivered the promise.

Most of us have the same kind of unconscious operating system running underneath our own faith.

It sounds like this: “If I doubt too much — God will never grant it.

If I’m honest about how much of a failure I am, I’ll lose the support I desperately need. ”

 

So, we’re busy managing the exterior. We try to say the right things; it’s as if we’ve decided that God is more moved by the curated version of us

than who we really are.

Sarah blew that belief apart in one moment behind a tent door.

She did the math.

Ninety years old. Worn out. Decades of waiting.

And her body’s only response was a laugh.  There is no way this is ever going to happen.

It’s interesting to note that in Chapter 17, Abraham laughed too: “Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?”

God names the child after both of them are done laughing, for their laugh.

Why did God deliver anyway? After the laugh, after the lie? The laugh was the most honest thing in that tent.

What if God —

who has been doing the impossible since before Sarah was born, prefers your honest statement of, “I can’t quite believe this could be true.”

The words you speak, worn out, behind the door of the tent, as you’re doing the math; and now matter how hard you try to get the numbers to work, it dones’t make any sense.

Meanwhile, look at what that name does across time:

Every time someone called that child.

Every time the covenant moved forward in his name.

Every time the genealogy of Christ was traced back through Isaac, we are reminded of this: God honors the laugh; he knows we doubt.

Sarah got the chance to say the laugh for the rest of her life.

Every time a neighbor asked, “What is youron’s name?”, she had to say it.

The laugh.

A monument.

God says, I heard you. I’ve got you. I show up anyway.

 

The laugh became the name.

The name carried the covenant.

The covenant became Christ.

She laughed at the impossible.

God said, “Perfect. We’ll start here.”