Scripture Daily

Context No. 1042 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 17:15-21: in context

15God said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you shall not call her name Sarai, but her name shall be Sarah. 16I will bless her, and moreover I will give you a son by her. Yes, I will bless her, and she will be a mother of nations. Kings of peoples will come from her.” 17Then Abraham fell on his face, and laughed, and said in his heart, “Will a child be born to him who is one hundred years old? Will Sarah, who is ninety years old, give birth?” 18Abraham said to God, “Oh that Ishmael might live before you!” 19God said, “No, but Sarah, your wife, will bear you a son. You shall call his name Isaac. I will establish my covenant with him for an everlasting covenant for his offspring after him. 20As for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He will become the father of twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. 21But I will establish my covenant with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you at this set time next year.”

God renames Sarai to Sarah and announces the impossible: I will bless her and give you a son by her; she will become the mother of nations, and kings will come from her. Abraham's response is not reverent silence but a laugh. He falls on his face and laughs, thinking, can a child be born to a man of a hundred, can Sarah bear a child at ninety? And he offers God an easier alternative: oh, that Ishmael might live before you. But God is firm: no, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call him Isaac, which means he laughs, and I will establish my covenant with him.

The tender thing here is that God does not rebuke the laugh. Abraham, the father of faith, hears God's promise and laughs at how impossible it sounds, and then tries to talk God into a more realistic plan, just bless the son I already have. It is faith mixed with disbelief, hope tangled up with the hard math of two old bodies. And God's response is not to scold but to insist on the promise and then, remarkably, to name the child Isaac, laughter, so that every time Abraham says his son's name he will remember his own laugh of doubt turned into a laugh of joy. God takes Abraham's incredulous laughter and builds it into the name of the covenant child, redeeming the doubt into delight. There is grace in that. God can handle our laughing at his promises, our attempts to substitute something more plausible, and still keep his word, and turn the very laughter of unbelief into the laughter of a fulfilled promise. The impossible son arrives on schedule, and his name is a joke that became a joy.

When God promises something that makes me laugh at its impossibility, or want to offer him a more realistic plan, can I trust that he keeps his word anyway and can turn even my doubt into joy?

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