Sarah, Abraham’s wife, was an old woman. Past the years of being able to conceive at any rate. She had had no children. Desperate for her husband to have children (times were different back then), she told him to take a servant as a concubine and have a child. He did, she did, it was a bad family decision. Good for the descendants of Ishmael. Bad for relations between Sarah and Abraham.
Then God told her she would conceive. She laughed.
Luke, the gospel writer, does not tell us Elizabeth’s response when her husband came home from Temple duty one day.
“Hi honey,” he might have said. “You’ll never guess what happened to me today at the Temple. I was struck unconscious. An angel of God appeared to me. Told me that we would have a child. I told him you were past the years of conception. He said, that’s OK, go home, sleep with your wife, and she’ll get pregnant. God says so.”
And she said, “Rrriiiigghhht…. Now I’ve heard them all.” Maybe she laughed. But they did, she did, and John (the Baptizer) was born.
Looks like one response to God is to laugh. At him. But he doesn’t get mad.
Did you ever get one of those whispers from God that told you to do something and you thought it was so crazy that you laughed at the thought?
Maybe not getting pregnant at 60, but maybe talking to someone you see who is from a different race, culture, social strata, or gender?
Maybe you get a whisper to share your story of faith in public. You laugh. “Not me, I can’t speak.” But God wants you to.