Crazy Enough to Laugh at God

So much attention is given to Abraham that we sometimes forget about his crazy wife Sarah.

From the very beginning she was crazy enough to go along with him “somewhere”. Imagine the scene. Abraham comes home and says he feels God wants him to move. “Great, honey, where to?” Sarah would have logically asked. “Um, I don’t really know. God wants us to go, well, somewhere.” Abram mumbles before rolling over and acting asleep.

And Sarah was nuts enough to go along with it. And nuts enough to go along with the circumcision thing. And nuts enough to send her husband in to her maid for a kid. And of course nuts enough to naturally change her mind the minute that maid got pregnant.

Crazy Sarah. That’s how I like to think of her.

And crazy enough to laugh at God.

In Genesis 18:9-15 Sarah’s in the kitchen eavesdropping. The kitchen is a great place to eavesdrop without being noticed, mind you. All of a sudden she overhears a conversation between some visitors and her husband.

But these weren’t just any old visitors. They were a manifestation of God, a theophany. I googled the word, and found this nice definition of a theophany. “It is a manifestation of God in the Bible that is tangible to the human senses. In its most restrictive sense, it is a visible appearance of God in the Old Testament period, often, but not always, in human form.”

So in other words, God is visiting Abraham and makes sure Sarah is around when he declares that she will be having a baby at the ripe old age of about 80 something.

Sarah laughed. This wasn’t a nice and polite laugh. This laugh was loud enough for God to hear, and it was a laugh of derision and disbelief. Sarah couldn’t help it. The whole thing sounded ridiculous. This was no longer just Abraham filling her in on some other crazy God antic. This was personal, and it was between her and God. And it was crazy.

Crazy Sarah. But before you write her off completely, consider how we laugh at God on a regular basis. Consider these ways:

1. We ignore God’s Word. Every Jesus following Christian believes that the Bible is God’s Word. Yet day after day it sits on our shelves waiting to be opened. That says only one thing about the level of trust we have in God.

2. We disobey His Word. This category is even worse. We believe the Bible is God’s Word, we read it, we know it, we go to church and raise our hands in worship at the right time, but we still willfully disobey the very things that God tells us to do. Is that not laughing hysterically at God?

3. We embrace it for others. Sarah got really good at that, and so are we. Have you been to a prayer meeting recently and heard some crazy person ask for the moon? What do you do? You simply bow your head and pray with great faith that God would grant the moon to your friend. Then you go home and wonder if God will provide you with a sliver of earth for your meager prayer list. Yes, I’ve been guilty of laughing at God by not embracing His word for myself.

4. We excuse the Word. Let me give you an example. You want to get married. You really do. You’ve been praying about it for years. God hasn’t answered yet. All of a sudden you find yourself telling your friends things like “Well, I know God says He’ll give me the desires of my heart, but I think his main goal is to change my desires.” I am guilty of making excuses for God regularly. I believe God says it and kind of means it, but when he doesn’t deliver in my time frame, I start making excuses for Him, kind of to protect His reputation. As if.

Perhaps Sarah didn’t have a hard time believing God would provide a son when she was 20, or even when she was 30. But after menopause, her belief went right out the window.

Are you praying for something that seems impossible? Have you been waiting so long and have started secretly laughing at God deep in your soul?

What I love about God is that He didn’t punish Sarah for laughing. He offered her mercy and grace.

And exactly one year later, Sarah had a son. In fact, Genesis 21:1-2 says it this way: “The Lord visited Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him.”

Sarah laughed one more time. But this was a laughter of joy and belief, a laughter of worship. In Genesis 21:6 she says this “God has made laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh over me.”

That’s the kind of laughter I want in my life. What about you?

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