Read with Me
Genesis 21:1-7 (HCSB)
The LORD came to Sarah as He had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what He had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time God had told him. Abraham named his son who was born to him—the one Sarah bore to him—Isaac. When his son Isaac was eight days old, Abraham circumcised him, as God had commanded him. Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.
Sarah said, “God has made me laugh, and everyone who hears will laugh with me.” She also said, “Who would have told Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne a son for him in his old age.”
Listen with Me
God always keeps His promises, and nothing that people put in His way will stop Him. Sarah was ninety years old when she gave birth to Isaac, which was at a time in her life that everyone believed was absolutely impossible, and that medical science even today would discount as not just unlikely come of a completely out of the question.
But God is the one who made the rules, and there is no one but God who can truly say what is possible and what is not. Anything He promises is not only possible in His power, it is a 100 percent certainty. It will happen.
Both Sarah and Abraham were, of course, elated over the fulfillment of the promise. They were obedient, and named the boy Isaac, a Hebrew word meaning “he laughed”, memorializing both Abraham’s and Sarah’s incredulous laughter when they heard God’s promise (Genesis 17:17-19, 18:11-14). And of course, they circumcised their new son on the eighth day after his birth in precise obedience to God’s commandment.
Over the course of the previous 25 years, God had worked hard to make this moment possible. He had led Abraham out of his hometown to a new country where the pull toward other gods and away from Him would not be as strong. (Even though the Canaanite had many gods, they didn’t have the ability to exert familial pressure on Abraham.) God had increased Abraham’s wealth so that he was self-sufficient and would not have to give even lip service to worshiping other gods in order to get his necessities. And God had protected Sarah from sexual assault, even when she had landed in the harems of two kings. And the whole time, he had consistently repeated His promises to Abraham, who believed them.
Pray with Me
Father, the fact is that, as human beings, we are impatient. Most of us would have given up on Your promise to us long before twenty-five years had passed. But Abraham, even the midst of trying to make Your promise come true in his own strength, and then urging You to accept and bless his own solution, still held on to the promise You had made to him literally decades earlier. Help me, Lord, to be as steadfast, as tenacious, as faithful in my own life. Amen.