A good laugh.
This laugh is quite unlike Sarah’s cynical sneer of a laugh as we encountered it in Chapter 18. Then she thought that as far as her child- bearing capacity went, the horse had already gone through the gate!
To this the Lord challenged her husband: “Why did Sarah laugh, and say, ‘Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too wonderful for the Lord?”
Here we read that “the Lord dealt with Sarah as he had said, and the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised. Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age, at the time of which God had spoken to him… Abraham was a hundred years old when his son Isaac was born to him.”
Don’t give up on God. Mary, my friend of blessed memory would always tell me, “Our God is always on time.”
As I get older, I’m discovering the truth of her statement. What seems like the right time to us, the moment when we really need a specific blessing, may not be the kairotic moment at all. Sometimes, it is only on reflection that we consider the benefits of delays (as we interpreted them). We recognise how unprepared we were for what was still to come. We analyse the environment as admit that the setting was just not right for the delivery of the right answer to our key request. We sense how personally we would not have made the most of the gift; or how the perceived delay forced us to be more resourceful. You know, there are certain things that we attempt only as circumstances force us to.
Sometimes, we’ve actually stopped praying a particular request and then it is granted. We might have given up on it, when in fact, God had not, but was only waiting for our “right time.”
Lord, teach us to trust you in our asking and in our waiting, that we will make the most of your blessings as they come. Amen.