Scripture Daily

Context No. 4038 of 4322 · Genesis

Context · Reflection

Genesis 18:11-15: in context

11Now Abraham and Sarah were old, well advanced in age. Sarah had passed the age of childbearing. 12Sarah laughed within herself, saying, “After I have grown old will I have pleasure, my lord being old also?” 13The LORD said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh, saying, ‘Will I really bear a child when I am old?’ 14Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the set time I will return to you, when the season comes around, and Sarah will have a son.” 15Then Sarah denied it, saying, “I didn’t laugh,” for she was afraid. He said, “No, but you did laugh.”

God has promised the aged Abraham and Sarah a son, but Sarah, long past childbearing, laughs to herself at the thought; after all these years, could such a thing really happen? And God gently confronts her laughter with a question that stands at the heart of faith: is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah shall have a son.

There is a question here that reaches every situation we face as impossible. Sarah looked at the promise through the lens of her own advanced age and natural limits, and it seemed absurd, laughable. But God's question reframes everything: is anything too hard for the LORD? What is impossible by every natural reckoning is not impossible for the God who made heaven and earth. Sarah's mistake was to measure God's promise by her own limitations, and it made her laugh in disbelief. We do the same when we look at what God has said and dismiss it as impossible because we cannot see how it could happen. But the God we serve is not bound by our limitations.

When God's promises seem impossible by every natural reckoning, do I dismiss them as Sarah first did, or do I let his question reframe everything, remembering that nothing is too hard for the LORD?

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