GOD MAKES ME LAUGH

God has given me good reason to laugh, and everybody who hears will laugh with me.—Gen. 21:6

If ever there was a time the world needed to laugh, it is now. If ever God’s community on earth needed to realize the joy that is in Christ, it is now. If ever we all needed to praise God from whom all blessings come, it is now. The one who spoke the above words was taught of God to laugh, and that amidst almost impossible circumstances. The story says something important to us.

It is the story of Sarah, the wife of Abraham, who gave birth to the child of promise when she was about 90 years old. Her childlessness had been such a burden to her that she persuaded Abraham to take Hagar as a secondary wife, which led to the birth of Ishmael. But it was still God’s intention that Sarah, not Hagar, should be the mother of the children of promise.

Sarah was blessed with those things that most women would envy. She was so beautiful that Abraham made it a habit to lie about her being his wife, lest the princes of Egypt and Gerar dispose of him and take her into their harem. She was married to a rich man, who happened to be her half-brother. And she was robust and healthy, living to the ripe age of 127. But she was childless, and this was a doubly bitter fate since her husband’s destiny was dependent upon his fathering a child.

There were those endless years of waiting, and her hopes dimmed that she would ever be able to present a son to Abraham. It was a despair that with the passing of the years finally embittered her. She waited until she was 75 before suggesting to her husband that her handmaid might do what she could not. What agony she must have suffered in making such a decision!

Laughter is a window through which we can look into one’s innermost self. A book in my library, written by a psychiatrist, contends that one’s mental health can be measured by his capacity to laugh, and especially by what it is that causes him to laugh. The book includes scores of cartoons, and as the reader peruses these he will most surely laugh-at some of them at least. I have used this book in my college classes, and I have found it as the author said it would be: that some students see nothing funny at all about many of the cartoons, while others can hardly control themselves. Some of the cartoons, for example, have a way of deflating the ego, and those who are already preoccupied with trying every means possible to keep their egoism in tact find little to laugh about. The author observes that there is, unfortunately, little laughter in a mental hospital. He also contends that laughter is a means of releasing tension and a sign that one is not taking himself too seriously.

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana put laughter into this perspective when he wrote: “The young man who has not wept is a savage, and the old man who will not laugh is a fool.” They say that Lincoln found time for laughter even amidst the crisis that divided the union, so much that Stanton and others spoke of him as “that jokester in the White House.” But another philosopher, Alfred North Whitehead, saw in laughter what Stanton was blind to, for he said: “Nothing, no experience good or bad, no belief, no cause is in itself momentous enough to monopolize the whole of life to the exclusion of laughter.” And Elton Trueblood sees so much humour in the life of our Lord that he wrote a book on The Humour of Christ.

That Sarah became bitter about it all is suggested in the incident of the messengers of the Lord informing Abraham that his wife would bear a son. Sarah was listening from a nearby tent, and the record says that she “laughed to herself.” Her words are pathetic, coming from one who had a more than ordinary maternal instinct: “Shall I indeed bear a child when I am old?” It is as if she said, crying out in bitterness: Now that I am an old woman you talk of my having a baby!

It was a laugh of resentment. But she further shows her humanity as well as her womanhood when she lied about laughing, once the messengers called her hand for questioning the power of God. It is, however, a tender part of the story, for Sarah, despite her deep hurt, did not want to be distrustful of God. And after all her laughter was under her breath, a kind of silent rebuke to what fate had handed her. When the messengers called her hand, discerning her hidden laughter, she realized she was in the presence of God, and so “Sarah lied because she was frightened, and denied that she had laughed.” It was all so very human. Apparently the Lord did not hold it against her, for the promise was not withdrawn, and it was not long until she became the mother of a baby boy.

Sarah a mother at 90 years of age! And after all those years of hoping and of dying hopes.

So the laugh of derision and pessimism gives way to the laugh of joy and triumph. The record says that “The Lord showed favour to Sarah as he had promised, and made good what he had said about her.” And so she laughed the laugh of victory. “God has given me good reason to laugh,” she said, “and everybody who hears will laugh with me.”

Bob Hope is loved by millions because he makes them laugh, but he is also something of a philosopher when he says: “Maybe if we could all laugh alike, and laugh at the same time, this world of ours wouldn’t be able to find so many things to squabble about.” Might that not apply to our divided brotherhood as well as to our divided world?

It is Sarah’s first laugh that is especially interesting, which appears to be in derision. Nietzsche may speak to this when he says: “Man alone suffers so excruciatingly in the world that he was compelled to invent laughter.” And that may explain a joking Lincoln in the White House as well as a laughing Sarah in her tent.

It is God that gives us laughter, which is more of an attitude toward life than it is chuckling sounds from the throat. Isaac’s name, which the Lord himself gave, has the ring of laughter about it, meaning as it does God’s laughter. And so, when Sarah bundled little Isaac into her arms, her cry was especially meaningful: God makes me laugh!

What a joy it must have been to her! Denied motherhood all of her life, her fondest dreams were now a reality. She held her infant son on her breast, feeling his heartbeat and the, warmth of his body. He was Isaac, God’s laughter, the only blessing she ever really longed for. God had promised and now it was real. What drama it is! Her laughter was, therefore, a cry of praise to God that He had touched her life so gloriously. Despite her years there must have been a glorious radiance to her countenance, and she became young again. God’s laughter added 37 years more to her life.

Even though God promises to give all of us our Isaacs, religion remains both boring and fearful to many of us. We know too little of the joy of the Holy Spirit. Supposing that we are under the yoke of a hard taskmaster, we are scared to live and afraid to die. God will put laughter in our hearts once we see clearly the beauty of His love. Joy is God’s gift for all His disciples, but we are too fearful of His wrath to appropriate it.

More than 50 times in the New Testament scriptures alone there are references to joy. We are even told to “be glad and dance with joy” when we are hated for Christ’s sake, for our reward will be great (Lk. 6:23). Paul speaks assuringly of “the God of hope who will fill you with all joy and peace,” (Rom. 15:13) and Luke the historian tells us that the early disciples were “filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.” (Acts 13:52)

Joy and the Holy Spirit are often connected in this way. Joy is a gift of the Spirit (Gal. 5:19), and we are told that the kingdom of God consists of “justice, peace, and joy, inspired by the Holy Spirit” (Rom. 15:17). And 1 Thess. 1:6 tells us that joy is in the Holy Spirit. It could well be, therefore, that our reluctance to open ourselves to the motivating power of the Holy Spirit denies us of that joy that is found only in Him.

But the joy of the Holy Spirit is only for him who is ready to forget self in the presence of God. John prepared the way for Jesus, and a mighty forerunner he was, attracting followers in droves. But when Jesus appeared, John was ready to step aside: “As he grows greater, I must grow less,” he said, and it was this that made it possible for him to say “This joy, this perfect joy, is now mine” (John 3:29).

With such joy in our hearts God’s laughter will mark our course, and God’s praises will be upon our lips. It was so with Sarah, for in praising God for Isaac she invited the whole world to laugh with her. It says something to Christian witness, for if we bear to the world a religion that makes us radiant with the Holy Spirit, it will light up all the dark places we may go.

It gives meaning to the lines by Ella Wheeler Wilcox:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;

Weep, and you weep alone,

For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,

But has trouble enough of its own. —the Editor