Sarah: Laughing at the Impossible

Today's Scripture

One scene, told twice — once at a tent door, once in God's permanent record.

Genesis 18:13-14 — "The LORD said to Abraham, 'Why did Sarah laugh and say, "Shall I indeed bear a child, now that I am old?" Is anything too hard for the LORD? At the appointed time I will return to you, about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son.'"

Hebrews 11:11 — "By faith Sarah herself received power to conceive, even when she was past the age, since she considered him faithful who had promised."

The Big Idea

Sarah waited twenty-five years for a promise that became more impossible with every birthday. She laughed at God — the bitter laugh of someone who has been disappointed too many times — and God kept his promise anyway. Today is about what faith looks like in the long gap between God's promise and God's timing. It is not a feeling of certainty. It is deciding, sometimes through gritted teeth, that the One who promised is faithful.

Reflection

The laugh behind the tent door

God promised Abraham and Sarah a son when leaving for Canaan. Then nothing happened. Ten years. Fifteen. Twenty-five. Sarah aged out of motherhood entirely. The promise went from unlikely to biologically absurd.

You know this kind of waiting in miniature. A friend texts "on my way!" — and an hour passes. Then two. At some point you stop watching the door. You tell yourself you never really expected them, because lowering your hope hurts less than holding it. Sarah had been lowering her hope for a quarter of a century.

So when three visitors arrive at the tent and one of them says, Genesis 18:10 — "I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife shall have a son" — Sarah, listening behind the tent door, laughs. "After I am worn out, and my lord is old, shall I have pleasure?" (Genesis 18:12). This is not the laughter of joy. It is the armor of a woman who has decided that hoping again is too expensive.

Before we judge her, the text catches us judging. Flip back one chapter: Genesis 17:17 — "Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said to himself, 'Shall a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Shall Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?'" Abraham — the great father of faith — laughed first. The Bible does not single Sarah out as the doubter. It shows us two exhausted old people who both find the promise funny in the worst way. Doubt in a long wait is not a women's problem or a beginner's problem. It is a human problem.

C.S. Lewis, writing to a friend about his own fears, named the exact feeling behind that kind of laughter:

"We are not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." — C.S. Lewis, Letters of C.S. Lewis

That was Sarah's real question. Not "Can God do anything?" but "Can I survive hoping one more time?"

And the long wait had already done damage. Years earlier, Sarah had tried to force the promise open herself: Genesis 16:1-2 — "And Sarai said to Abram, 'Behold now, the LORD has prevented me from bearing children. Go in to my servant; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.'" It was a culturally normal move and a spiritual disaster — a surrogate son, Ishmael, and a household full of rivalry and grief that Scripture records without flinching. Waiting people are tempted people. When God seems slow, we start drafting workarounds, and the workarounds always cost more than the wait.

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

God's response to Sarah's laugh is one of the most important questions in the Bible: Genesis 18:14 — "Is anything too hard for the LORD?" The Hebrew word for "hard" means something closer to wonderful, beyond all limits. God is not asking whether he is fairly capable. He is asking whether there is any ceiling on him at all.

Notice what God does not do. He does not cancel the promise because Sarah laughed. He does not demand she work up better feelings first. When she denies laughing — "for she was afraid" — he simply tells her the truth: "No, but you did laugh" (Genesis 18:15). Honest, gentle, and unmoved in his purpose. Sarah's doubt is real, and God's promise does not flinch.

This rearranges our definition of faith. Martin Luther, who spent years tormented by his own doubts, defined it like this:

"Faith is a living, daring confidence in God's grace, so sure and certain that a man could stake his life on it a thousand times." — Martin Luther, Preface to Romans

Daring confidence in God's grace — not confidence in our own steadiness. John Calvin made the same point with a lawyer's precision. Faith, he wrote, is:

"a firm and certain knowledge of God's benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the freely given promise in Christ, both revealed to our minds and sealed upon our hearts through the Holy Spirit." — John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion

Founded on the promise — not on the mood we woke up with. That is why the desperate father in Mark's Gospel could pray the most relatable prayer in the Bible: Mark 9:24 — "I believe; help my unbelief!" Jesus answered that prayer. He did not send the man home to come back with purer faith. Faith the size of a mustard seed, aimed at a faithful God, is enough — because the power was never in the seed.

What the waiting was for

But why the twenty-five years? If God meant to give Sarah a son all along, why not do it while it was still easy?

Peter answers part of it: 2 Peter 3:9 — "The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you." God's delays are not God's absence. J.I. Packer, in his classic Knowing God, turned this into pastoral counsel for everyone stuck in the gap:

"'Wait on the Lord' is a constant refrain in the Psalms, and it is a necessary word, for God often keeps us waiting. He is not in such a hurry as we are... When in doubt, do nothing, but continue to wait on God. When action is needed, light will come." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

And there is something more. God waited until the promise could not possibly be mistaken for a human achievement. A son born to a thirty-year-old Sarah would have been a happy story. A son born to a ninety-year-old Sarah is a signature. Paul saw this clearly: Romans 4:19-21 — Abraham "did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead... No unbelief made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised." Paul is summarizing the end of their journey, not airbrushing the middle — Genesis shows us every wobble. But by the end, two laughing skeptics had become people who staked everything on God's word.

Elisabeth Elliot — who buried one husband on the mission field and lost another to cancer — knew the waiting room as well as anyone in the modern church:

"The deepest spiritual lessons are not learned by His letting us have our way in the end, but by His making us wait, bearing with us in love and patience until we are able honestly to pray what He taught His disciples to pray: Thy will be done." — Elisabeth Elliot, Passion and Purity

The wait was not wasted time. The wait was the classroom.

God gets the last laugh

Then the promise lands. Genesis 21:1-2 — "The LORD visited Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did to Sarah as he had promised. And Sarah conceived and bore Abraham a son in his old age at the time of which God had spoken to him." Three times in two verses: as he had said, as he had promised, of which God had spoken. The narrator wants no confusion about what just happened.

They name the boy Isaac — which means he laughs. God writes Sarah's bitter laugh into her son's name and transforms it. Genesis 21:6 — "And Sarah said, 'God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh over me.'" The laughter of cynicism has become the laughter of joy, and Sarah invites the whole world to join in. Centuries later, God holds her up — not as a cautionary tale but as a mother of the faithful: Isaiah 51:2 — "Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, that I might bless him and multiply him."

And here is where Sarah's story quietly becomes the gospel. Hold Genesis 18:14 — "Is anything too hard for the LORD?" — next to the angel Gabriel's words to another woman facing an impossible birth: Luke 1:37 — "For nothing will be impossible with God." It is the same sentence, spoken across two thousand years. The God who opened a dead womb in Genesis is announcing a virgin's son in Luke — and behind both stands the morning he opened a dead tomb. Charles Spurgeon defined faith in exactly these terms:

"Faith is believing that Christ is what he is said to be, and that he will do what he has promised to do, and then to expect this of him." — Charles Spurgeon, All of Grace

Sarah "considered him faithful who had promised" (Hebrews 11:11) — and the entire Christian life is that one move, repeated daily. We are not asked to feel certain. We are asked to consider him faithful. Augustine described the payoff:

"Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe." — Augustine, Sermons

Sarah saw. She held Isaac. And every Easter morning is God making the same point at full volume: the promises that look dead are the ones he most delights to keep.

Going Deeper

Find the promise you have stopped praying about — there usually is one, buried under "I'm being realistic now." Today, write it down in one sentence. Under it, copy Genesis 18:14: "Is anything too hard for the LORD?" Then pray the Mark 9:24 prayer over it, word for word: "I believe; help my unbelief." That is the whole exercise. You are not pretending to feel hopeful. You are putting your laugh — bitter or otherwise — where Sarah put hers: within earshot of the God who keeps his word.