The Laugh Behind the Tent Door

Hagar's boy, Ishmael, was thirteen years old, and his father was ninety-nine. That year God gave Abram a new name, Abraham, which means "father of many," and he changed Sarai's name to Sarah. Not long after, on a hot afternoon, three visitors came.

Abraham was sitting in his tent doorway, under the big oak trees at Mamre. He looked up, and there stood three men.

Abraham did not know it yet, but one of them was the LORD.

Up he jumped, and he ran. (A ninety-nine-year-old man running in the heat of the day is worth seeing.) He bowed with his face in the dust. "My lord, please don't pass me by! Let me bring water to wash your feet. Rest under the tree, and I'll fetch you a bite of bread."

Abraham hurried into the tent. "Sarah! Quick! Take the best flour and bake some bread!" Then he ran to his herd, picked out a fine young calf, and gave it to a servant. (Abraham had offered a bite of bread. What came out was a mountain of fresh loaves, a whole calf cooked and ready, and curds and milk to go with it.) He set it all out under the tree and stood by while they ate.

"Where is Sarah, your wife?" one of them asked.

"There, in the tent."

"I will come back about this time next year," said the visitor, "and Sarah your wife will have a son."

Sarah was standing just inside the tent door, listening. She was ninety years old, and her years for having babies had ended long ago. God had already told Abraham she would have a son, and Abraham had fallen flat on his face and laughed. Now it was Sarah's turn.

She laughed inside herself, without a sound. "I'm worn out, and my husband is old. A baby? Me?"

The LORD said to Abraham, "Why did Sarah laugh and say, 'Can I really have a baby, now that I am old?' Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the time I have set, I will come back to you, next year, and Sarah will have a son."

Inside the tent, Sarah went cold. She was frightened, so she fibbed. "I didn't laugh!"

"No," said the LORD. "You did laugh."

He did not take the promise back. He had already chosen the boy's name: Isaac, which means "he laughs."

Sarah would have her son. But God had promised Abraham more than one boy. Through Abraham's family, God said, every family on earth would be blessed, and one baby in one tent could not do that, however much he made his mother laugh.

Down through Isaac's family the promise went, tent after tent and grandson after grandson, while the centuries piled up.

Then an angel named Gabriel came visiting, with news of a baby even harder to believe than Isaac. He went to a young woman named Mary, who was engaged to a man named Joseph. The angel named the baby before he was born, as God had named Isaac. "How can this be?" Mary asked. Gabriel said God's own Spirit would do it. He told her that Elizabeth, an old woman in Mary's family who had never had a child, was already expecting a baby boy. Then he gave Mary the question from the tent door, turned into a promise: "Nothing is impossible with God."

Is anything too hard for the LORD? Mary held the answer in her arms in Bethlehem: her baby boy, Jesus.