You’ve got to be kidding

Abraham bowed down with his face touching the ground but he began to laugh when he thought, ‘Can a man have child when he is a hundred years old? Can Sarah have a child at ninety?’ He asked God, ‘Why not let Ishmael be my heir?’ But God said, ‘No. Your wife Sarah will bear you a son and you will name him Isaac. I will keep my covenant with him and with his descendants for ever. It is an everlasting covenant.’     (verses 17-19)

Read Genesis 17:15-27

How do you feel when people make promises you’re sure they can’t or won’t keep? Especially when you’ve heard them making promises before, but nothing has come of them? Do you really believe them?

Abraham and Sarah had already shown that they felt they had to take matters into their own hands if they were to have the child that God kept promising. That’s why Abraham took Hagar as a mistress; that’s how he came to have a son named Ishmael.

But Ishmael was not the son God meant Abraham to have.

So, once again God made the promise. It would be Sarah who gave birth to a son. And perhaps it’s not so strange that Abraham had a bit of a chuckle at the thought of two aged people having their first child at their time of life.

As we hear and read God’s word, we too hear God making promises. Amazing promises. The promise that we can be totally sure of our salvation. That we have eternal life and that we have it now. That we will do greater things than Jesus did.

Abraham laughed because he doubted. How do we respond?

Father, forgive me for the times I have doubted your promises. Give me the total assurance that I am everything you say I am and can do everything you empower me to do. Amen.

by Bob Turnbull, in ‘God’s Promises for each Day’ (LCA, Openbook, 1999)

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