Glorious Joy

Day 5

Memory Verse – Isaiah 35:10 And those the Lord has rescued will return.
They will enter Zion with singing;
    everlasting joy will crown their heads.
Gladness and joy will overtake them,
    and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

Read Genesis 18

Our final Bible reading for the week may seem a strange one to you, but bear with me. Sometimes we have good reasons to be sad. Not because we have done anything wrong…but because we have been wronged. We find Abraham and Sarah here in a sad predicament. They are old, and they have had no children. Now, this was not uncommon in those days. Many women were barren, and there was no medical intervention available to them. But, God had promised them they would have a son! They had been expecting the promise for a very long time, and it had never come. Now they were both well past the age when having a child was possible, so Sarah had completely given up any hope of having the promise come to pass. 

Think about that. Think how you would feel if you were in Sarah’s shoes. She had spent all of her adult life expecting, waiting, hoping beyond hope for God to keep His Word to her. So, when three strangers arrived saying that she will have a baby within a year, she laughed. And not because she was happy. Not because finally, after all these years, she was actually going to hold a newborn in her arms that she had carried and birthed! No…she laughed derisively. There is an anger, a biting and bitter tinge to her laugh. “Right, God, right. I gave up on you a long time ago!”

Nevertheless, a few chapters later we see God does keep His promises, even when all seems impossible. 

Genesis 21:1 Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah what he had promised. 2 Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. 3 Abraham gave the name Isaac to the son Sarah bore him. 4 When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God commanded him.5 Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

6 Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” 7 And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

She has a son, and they name him Isaac. Isaac means laughter. And not the sardonic laughter of a few chapters before, but a joyful, celebratory, God-praising, happy-go-lucky, full of gladness, belly laugh! She had a son! God kept His Word. He always does. 

And this gives us reason to be joyful, too. At least it should. He has kept His promises to us, and He will continue to do so. And every time we see his promise fulfilled, we can laugh.