Laugh Your Pink Back Pt. 2: Sarah's First Laugh

Laughter was always meant to cascade like waterfalls, stripping away dusty crusts as it falls. It was always meant to chatter cheerfully like a brook, boasting of the promises of God.

Sarah laughed.

But not because she was boasting of the promises of God; not because she believed they would come to be.

Hers was a sharp kind of laughter—the defensive kind. The kind people use when hope has become too dangerous to hold with bare hands.

God had spoken promise over Abraham and Sarah decades earlier. A son. A family. A future. At first, perhaps, the promise felt wild and wonderful. She was sixty-five. Still strong. Still waiting. Still capable of imagining a different ending. To be sure, it would need a miracle, but there was some might left in them to receive it.

But twenty-five years is a long time to hold hands ready, as aching arms lose might every year. By Genesis 18, she is ninety years old. The roller coaster of hormones and heartbreak is long behind her. Her body has closed the door on the possibility. Any might she had has died with her dreams.

Strangers arrive at their tent. And once again Heaven speaks.

“I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”

And Sarah laughs.

You can imagine the snort that came out before she could stop it. The scoff of a woman who has grieved the thing too many times, well-crusted by disappointment.

Have you known the slow transformation of disappointment? Open prayers become quieter; bold prayers become more cautious. Eventually hope has crusted dry; cynicism feels safer than heartbreak.

O, cynicism—disappointed hope trying to protect itself. It brings a laughter of a different kind. We laugh at ourselves before anybody else can. We make jokes out of our sadness. Sarcasm replaces vulnerability.

Some laughter heals pain. Some laughter hides pain.

Sarah’s first laugh was armour.

Behold God! Do you see it? He does not revoke the promise. He does not say: Well, since you doubted Me, never mind.

He keeps speaking promise anyway.

Which means exhausted faith does not intimidate God. Complicated emotions do not disqualify us from grace.

Do we quietly assume God only moves powerfully through confident people, when Scripture is crowded with doubters and tremblers? With people who hide, who ask impossible questions, who laugh at miracles before they arrive?

And still God moved toward them.

A year later, Sarah holds a child in her arms. And the story becomes unbearably beautiful:

God tells them to name the baby Isaac. “He laughs.”

Not strength. Not victory. Not covenant. Not glory.

Laughter.

The promise is laughter.

How will they know that I am your God and you are my people? The sign of the covenant is laughter.

Every laugh we toss into impossible circumstances boasts of the sure promises of God. Every laugh that cascades over dry and dead hopes strips away defence and denial. And as our laughter shouts in defiance to the hope-strangling lies, it is laughter that opens the way to the covenant.

He is our God. We are his people. And laughter is our hope; it is the sign; and it is our promised inheritance.