History and Story (5)
Sarah said, “God has made laughter for me; everyone who hears will laugh with me.” Genesis 21:6 NASB
Laugh– Abraham’s household journeys to Gerar. Once again he faces a king who might consider Sarah a prize. Abraham does not wait to measure the morality of the king. He retreats to a strategy that worked in the past. He pawns Sarah off as his sister. This time God intervenes before there is a sexual liaison. God gets the king’s full attention by announcing in a dream that Sarah is the wife of another man and sleeping with her brings the death sentence to the king. In this encounter, the king is the only one who appears to have any moral integrity. He immediately takes action, demanding the truth from Abraham (which he never gets), vindicating Sarah and establishing a weary peace with this foreigner. While the story focuses on the king and Abraham, we should notice that in this case Sarah is also implicated in the lie. The king says to God, “Didn’t she herself say ‘He is my brother’?” Sarah has learned that lying about sexual bonds is an acceptable practice in the household of Abraham. God’s intervention and the king’s reaction overturn the threat and the deception. But at a cost. Both Sarah and Abraham are not to be trusted. Eventually this pattern of family distrust scoops up Ishmael and Isaac.
Since Sarah has just received a promise that she will have a son, perhaps she thinks that if she and Abraham cannot produce this child, maybe she and the king can. There may be more to her comment that she expects no pleasure from old Abraham. She has given no credence to God’s ability to do whatever He wishes. God’s intervention prior to sexual union makes it clear that Sarah is to have a child only by Abraham and that the sexual condition of both of these parents has no bearing on the outcome. [If we jump ahead through the centuries, we will find that sometime during this period Sarah actually comes to the point of believing God’s promise, but this fact is not revealed in the story thus far.]
Our last view of Sarah occurs after the birth of Isaac. It is notable that the long-awaited birth of the heir of the promise occupies only two short verses, barely mentioning Sarah.
But after the circumcision, when the covenant promise to Isaac is complete, Sarah has this to say:
“God has made a joke of me; whoever hears will laugh at me.”
This is not the usual translation.[1] Most renderings of this verse suggest that Sarah is rejoicing in the birth of Isaac. But this Hebrew word, ṣāḥaq, is used in 17:17 and 18:12-15 in the sense of sarcasm (Abraham in 17 and Sarah in 18 both “laugh” at God’s claim that they will have a child). Furthermore, the same root word is used in the final story of Sarah when she observes Ishmael “playing” [“mocking”?] Isaac. Since Sarah’s reaction to Ishmael’s action is anything but joyful, the sense of this word can hardly be one of pleasure. “ . . to laugh is to make a choice; laughter is two-faced: ‘here for mockery, there for joy.’”[2]
There is also a pun here in Hebrew. The name Isaac comes from the same root word. So in one sense Sarah is saying that everyone who hears about this incredible tale will “Isaac” at her—will mock the claim that Isaac came from her.
Aside from the etymological data, there is another reason to believe that this word does not express happiness for Sarah. The reason is found in Sarah’s long history of discontent. One of the surprising results of discontent is that an attitude of discontent infects life even when life appears to finally give reasons for contentment. Sarah has waited all of her life for this event. And all of her life she has been abused, victimized and humiliated in her relationship with the man attached to her and to the promise. She has been unhappy for a very long time, so unhappy that even when God Himself tells her that the life-long desire for a child will come to pass, her inner personality rejects God’s truth. After all these years of discontent, what could possibly make her believe that her life would be fulfilled? She rejects the thought that she will once again enjoy sex with the hope of conception. She sees herself as a worn out set of clothes.
Then the event arrives. Isaac is born. But instead of praise for the faithfulness of God, Sarah turns toward her humiliation. She complains that even in the fulfillment of the promise, her life has not improved. No one outside the camp is going to believe that this is her son. She will look like a dotting grandmother, not a proud parent. People will see her body as a worn out set of clothes and mock her claims to have borne this baby. Discontentment robs Sarah of joy in God’s triumph. Her victory is still a defeat. She is focused on her identity issues rather than God’s cosmic purposes.[3]
Topical Index: Sarah, laugh, Isaac, yiṣḥāq, ṣāḥaq, Genesis 16:6, Genesis 21:6
[1]NASB renders the phrase, “God has made laughter for me, everyone who hears will laugh with me.” But there is a real question whether the text should be read “with me” or “at me.”
[2]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, The Beginning of Desire: Reflections on Genesis, p. 113.
[3]Once again we are reminded of the polar opposite seen in Mary. Her humble obedience sets the stage for the greatest act of faith a woman has ever shown. She is focused on the purposes of her Lord, not on the consequences to her social status. Her obedience in spite of social humiliation leads directly to victorious triumph. Do you suppose that Mary remembered the story of Sarah and saw Sarah’s mistake?
In the cosmic Order Of Operations of love, we do unto others as we are already doing unto ourselves, but we do unto ourselves what we are already doing with God (and so therefore are assuming He is doing with us). People with trust issues (the ‘natural’ byproduct of unresolved disconnection, or, trauma) have a problem first with their trust in YHVH because stress (lack of shalom, or, homeostasis in all dimensions) IS the experience of lack of trust in God. When we lack trust in God (doubt and disbelief) that cosmic OOO (Order Of Operations) kicks in and we find ourselves not being able to trust ourselves, either (which is also manifesting in stress). It is but a short step from there to project that inner reality out into lack of trust of others (which I think all stressed people are suffering from, too). When we do not trust, we ‘naturally’ turn to believing that it is now ‘all up to ME’. Sarai lacked trust on all levels, surely. Where she lost it, we do not know, but, like Skip has been pointing out, the fruit is clear to see. When we mock (doubt) ourselves, we assume everybody else is, too. Our inner reality gets projected onto the outer one, because that is how the paradigm works. Sarai was clearly suffering from the thought that God ‘needed’ help (classic trust issue result).
For Sarai, broken trust resulted in all the baleful fruit of the unloving in her life – all of what I call the ‘self’ stuff. We can see self doubt (and as a result, self mocking), self hatred (which projected outward into bitterness toward others), self focus (procreation is all about ME), self justification (“send Hagar away”), and the list goes on, with the inevitable kingpin of the manifestation of unloving in our lives – self pity – which is the very glue that holds the reality of hell (death, or, the past) together, I am convinced. Sarai was clearly suffering from the lack of love from somebody who was supposed to love her, but was not, and so she was being tempted with all the self stuff that the unloving in our lives comes to tempt us with. Sarai had apparently tasted the golden apple of self pity (which, of all the self stuff, looks most like God to us, I think), and had gotten sucked into the black hole of addiction to it. Self focus of all kinds (which is what broken trust throws us into) was eating her alive.
From personal experience, I can attest that the hell of self pity is voracious and “never satisfied”. I believe that once that monster gets let into the door of our sacrosanct castles, only an act of God can get it back out again. Sarai – even Sarah – had a secret monster to feed, and it still wanted to be fed no matter what the external circumstances might be. This is what sin does in our lives: it negates all the good stuff – self pity being the WORST, in my opinion. You can still feel sorry for yourself in places where every other sin – even bitterness – can get absurd, for self pity can always justify itself (look like righteousness) no matter what. Sarai had a monster she needed to slay, but no power on earth – even all the power of good fortune – can touch self pity.
Somehow she humbled up and saw her sin – we are not told how – and let her Redeemer pull her out of that self-imposed(!) pit, but, according to Skip’s translation, it looks like it was only AFTER she gave her son his name!
“we do unto others as we are already doing unto ourselves,”….
Good morning Laurita, what’s so amazing to me is that, even though this can look very ugly at times, it’s actually the key that’s given to us in order to apply compassion where it counts. I’ve learned that when someone is “accusing” me of thinking a certain way, or that my motivation concerning them is misplaced, in reality it’s a mirror of how they think and are motivated. That, (if one can get past the offence) is the thing that can help us identify what cage they are locked in and the key to open it. If nothing else, this story really displays this to the greatest degree. One has to wonder what was going on in Sarah’s head, (not that this was a Sarah problem, it was an Abraham AND Sarah problem) concerning Abraham. Why was everyone else so loyal to Abraham, couldn’t they see what she saw? Mix that with wondering what was being said behind closed doors and you get a deadly potion for sure. As you said, self pity is a prison, and it seems to have been the motivating factor behind Abraham and Sarah tearing each other down rather than coming up under each other. You can’t fix debt by borrowing and you can’t get peace by dwelling in chaos. Kind produces after kind and if we can respond with compassion and true identification in spite of the offence, perhaps we can get the right key in the lock.
Thank you for helping think this through, Robert. You are right; people project out what is within, and we can ‘read’ them by looking at what is being portrayed on their projector. People who are suffering from rejection (because it has already been done to them) reject others to ‘protect’ themselves from further rejection. If we can see that, we can avoid being sucked into their temptation field (because sin always breeds more sin) and ‘agreeing’ to reject them back, thus ‘confirming’ their suspicion that they needed to ‘protect’ themselves! Misery loves company, and sin must ‘justify’ itself by inciting further sin in the sinner as well as in all those around the sinner. If we are not careful, we can ‘agree’ with the sin in others, thus handing it the only legitimacy it ever could have, on a silver platter.
Yeshua NEVER avoided rejecting folks; even those demon-filled ones hurling obscenities at Him. He waded in anyway; and, while ignoring their false-negative ‘demon’ identity, spoke directly to who they really were. So must we; but we must first learn to see ourselves as heaven sees us – made in the image of God – and then we will be able to see others that way, too. If I can see who you really are, not only do you no longer have to pretend to be ‘good’; you no longer can get away with the false identity (or just plain lack of identity) that sin pastes (occludes) onto all of us. Sin peers at the world through distorted, occultic lenses where nothing appears to be as it really is. Righteousness returns us to clear sight (truth) and everything in creation manifests to the “pure” as it really is. Sin, after all, is just a hijacking parasite that can go while we can stay; free from all occluding false identity.
May we all purchase the eyesalve of heaven that results in those rose-colored glasses through which to see all through the eyes of God – which is how Yeshua saw it. I want the mind of Christ AND His eyes, too, by which to administer His heart to the starving world around me; so help me, God.
Bravo. More incredible insights. Thanks for letting us see through your glasses. I Think I need an updated prescription for my glasses ! Better consult my heavenly ophthalmologist ! Isn’t God good ! He is so involved in our lives. His mercy is over all of his works. His compassions fail not, they are new every morning, great is his faithfulness. He has loaded us with his benefits! The mercy of the Lord endures forever ! Hallelujah! May He reign in us and rain on us! Mercy drops round us are falling, but for the showers we plead !
I wish you well with that sister. I concur in principle yet the reality in these times can be somewhat different.
Amos 5;10 can be strung together with a proverb to read.. “They hate him who reproves in the gate…and abhor him who speaks with integrity….therefore at such a time the prudent man keeps silent for the times they are evil”.
Too often I have hoped that shearing the truth as I see or perceive it because I see real spiritual or natural risk or danger for my brothers tends to turn into push back and judgment and rejection of me rather than gratitude and receiving of the words.
No doubt I can be more sensitive and gracious in the delivery but seldom is truth that convicts easy to here. and must be carefully delivered. The recipient must be more concerned with truth than comfort and personal position.
I have often been guided by Ezekiel 33:6 (But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood.’)
It can be a lonely place to willingly standing up and be shearing the risks of personal behaviors or positions, particularly when they are rampant and business as usual for most of our culture…Laying down ones life for your fiends in this manner (Yeshua’s definition for the greatest form of “love”) can be personally and professionally costly..
Prudence is how God thinks, too, Mark, and we are often instructed to employ it. That is a Godly principle, and Yeshua often employed it; moving out of resistant areas where His life was being threatened to areas more open to Him. We, too, are instructed to make moves to preserve our lives, and not rush heedlessly into danger.
Also, you cannot ‘tell’ someone something their ears are not open to hear. It takes the guidance of the Spirit to know that, though. We should pray often for that guidance.
But, all of us are called to be “witnesses”. Living the truth can be very different from saying it! Living it means that we seek to repair disconnects as fast as they happen. Living the truth is where we, more often than not, keep our mouths SHUT when we would really really like to say something! Living the truth about love is where we respect the choices of others but do not hand them the authority to make them for us. Boundary issues are the first things to crop up when people sin: they lose the ability to respect boundaries. Boundaries are a very important part of Promised Land dwelling, and they include personal space, too.
Respect – that critical substrate of trust – IS the boundary between people. Love strives to reestablish respect because no one can express identity without it BUT we have to show respect to God, first, and He calls us to love; therefore, we must learn to love (connect) with others no matter where they are at with it. We must be respectful, trustworthy, and vulnerable WITHOUT crossing the boundary lines of ourselves or others. May we pray for discernment and prudence, too, as we seek to participate in kingdom work where identity of its subjects is restored (or at least offered) to all, is my desire.
I think you just caused me to recognize that there has to be a replacement for self-pity. Could it be self compassion ?! Just a thought. Maybe it’s love? The love described in loving your neighbor as you love yourself. Having compassion on your neighbor as you have compassion, not self-pity, on yourself. Just something seemingly worthwhile to think about. Thanks.
So helpful, Laurita! Thank you for your insight, your experience and your knowledge. Very beneficial to me. Self-pity. What a monster! It’s a slippery, slimy monster. Sort of reminds me of how Satan is described. He can appear to be an angel of light and so we all can be deceived and sucked into the lie. Self-pity is a lie. It’s where we have learned to go and God is in the process of revelation so that we can see more clearly the patterns that we so easily fall into, like grooves in the road in the spring time in Minnesota when the freeze begins to leave the ground and you end up driving in big old muddy ruts! I have been a prisoner to self-pity. I suppose it served it’s purpose because no one else was feeling any pity for me. But now, God calls me to put away childish things. I’m a man now. I’m no longer that abused and neglected child. I am being transformed by the renewing of my mind. The old leaven is being purged out! Even this morning, the Holy Spirit showed me a pattern that he is changing in me. I had a sense of an offense happen To me and I instantly wanted to turn to myself for comfort/relief/denial! But at least, this time, before I indulged, I saw it and rejected it. Hallelujah. Little by little! I guess you could say that self-pity is a bottomless pit, probably the base is the pit of hell!
So, thank you, Laurita. Your walk, your experience, your ability to express and teach is a huge blessing. Someone else has traveled this journey and found solid ground in God !
I have become ravenous in my desire and hunger for truth. Too many wasted years !
Thank you, Skip!
Laurita, your comment is very helpful and very piercing at the same time. An elderly psychologist told me I could win a contest for worst childhoods. Trauma and mistrust have devoured decades of my life. The thing that is the heaviest burden is how I tried so hard to protect my children and give them a better life. I couldn’t shelter them from me. It’s so hard to trust God. I would feel pity for anyone who had lived through some of the things I’ve experienced. I guess I do pity myself. I know that I have not known real shalom. It was so hard to “fear not” when horrible nightmares were a regular occurrence. Torah and yoga have helped. Now, though, I see the high price that generational and personal sin has caused for my family and for me. I regularly repent that I was not able to be victorious and have a fruitful life. I want to love God. I try to love God. I long to love God. I ask God to help me know what love looks like so I can love Him in a healthy way. I appreciate you and know that you speak with authority. Thank you
Wanting, trying, longing and asking IS loving God.
Thank you.
Dear Theresa,
I am so glad you wrote. I have had a lot of time to think while I sit with my uncle, who is dying of a life-long broken heart. He has a lot of regrets for a life of unfruitfulness, too. I think we can get our assignment for this life wrong sometimes. We think it is about productivity and ‘worth’, but that is just the Western paradigm posing as righteousness.
This life is not the real race: that would be the next life. This life is the preliminary qualifier to determine who will participate in the real race. Of course it would be great if we were all born into perfect families filled with love and were able to charge out into the world with a full toolbox to change it with, but that is not reality.
All the world ever needed from me is me. All God ever needed from me is me, too. That’s it. That’s all. He does the rest. All of it. Trauma tempts us to be our own ‘protectors’. We do that by WITHHOLDING ourselves from God, ourselves, and others! This is what we must repent for. We are the ones who put up the barriers. He has to take them down, but we have to let them go (recognize and repent for them), first.
Pride is the biggest barrier. It can disguise itself as false humility: “I am unworthy”; as righteousness: “I must be perfect”; as the false antidote for shame: as a version of ‘self respect’ that in actuality prevents us from reaching out and really touching others or letting them (or God!) touch us back. If you have shame, you have pride. The shame is ‘protection’, too, but we cannot get rid of it until we can see the pride that is driving it and keeping it in place.
Pride keeps us from vulnerability; from being available to God, self and others. Self pity gives us ‘permission’ to ‘protect’ ourselves with that pride. We feel that we would have no ‘worth’ at all if we didn’t ‘look out for ourselves’ by feeling sorry for ourselves – all in the name of love, of course! I fell for these substitutes for love for a long time. No “peaceable fruit of righteousness” resulted, which is how I knew something was wrong.
All we need to bring to God, ourselves and others is ourselves because that is all God, ourselves and others ever needed from us. The rest is just ‘ways’ to avoid doing that! I finally just decided to repent for everything and start over. The entire mess was wrong for me.
I don’t have any ‘answers’. That is not what we are called to do, anyway. All I have is me, so that is what I have to offer. If you, Theresa (or anybody else) wants to connect with me, here is my email: hayeslaurita at gmail.
Love, Laurita
I get a bit concerned when you suggest that this life is not the real place. Of course, it is the real place, isn’t it? There isn’t any other place where we are now, is there? And the idea of “another” place, another REAL world, isn’t part of the Torah. That idea is either much more ancient (Egypt) or much later (Greece and the West), but it seems to be deliberately EXCLUDED from the tanakh.
If this is the ONLY place, you would be right; the kingdom would be represented perfectly here and now through us. And, I believe prophecy tells us that the 144,000 represent that perfect unity; but that is at the very last nick of time as we know it, right?
What about the rest of us ‘failures’? If this life is all it is for most of us, then “failure” is what we have stamped next to our names if you look at it through the lens of successfully establishing the kingdom on planet earth. Brokenness consumes entire lifetimes for most of us!
I refuse to participate in the dialectic that artificially separated the kingdom into either/or. It is NOT either “kingdom now” or “kingdom later”. It is both, right? And, in that context, we are not required to reset nature or perfectly represent truth as a prerequisite for the next life (kingdom now advocates), BUT neither can we safely ignore the mandate that we relearn how to do both here and now, either (which is what the kingdom later advocates typically do).
I think the dialectic gives us excuses (as well as mandates; prerequisites, if you like) on both ends, but none of us have an excuse to either feel like a failure (by thinking that this life is the ONLY place in which to establish the kingdom) or feel like we don’t have to obey our original calling (which is to establish and order God’s kingdom here and now). The kingdom calling has not changed, but reality is that most of us are barely going to make it to the starting line before its lights out for us. That, however, is not failure for the kingdom. I am convinced that there is eternity for that, TOO.
Salvation starts now, but is obviously not perfected (completed) in this life. I believe it will take eternity for ALL that got started here and now, and even then we will just be getting started good!
Thank you for the qualifying dialogue. There is so much to straighten out!
My sympathies for you Laurita as you sit with your uncle waiting for death. I lost my dad earlier this year. I have come to the conclusion that it is the dying part that is the hardest. So hard to watch the enemy “death” claim a human (or animal) that you love. You wait for the miracle recovery and most times it does not come. Once that breath of life leaves the body a transition occurs for the living too. It is finished. Time to move on.
It is a mystery what occurs within/between that dying mind and God. Something the living don’t understand and won’t until their time to pass on comes.
I’ll be praying for you.
Thank you, Dawn and everybody else, too. I felt the vast difference the prayers of others make. Miracles and grace. I was able to be there in the right place for my uncle to express his true heart, and, later, to be with him and pray for him and let him go when he passed. God healed the frustration of a lifetime, and it was grace. Thank you, all, I am deeply grateful for something I don’t think I would ever have been able to do ‘all by myself’.
Laurita, you have my sympathy and prayers as you face the death of your uncle. I have been so deeply betrayed by those who were supposed to love me that it’s hard for me to trust. I believe I have to trust God in order to love Him. This blog is helping me learn to trust God but it’s a slow process. Thank you for offering yourself.
While most marriages can not survive the smallest of difficulties. Abraham and Sarah’s did. Culturally as well as traditionally Abraham could of been considered right to abandon Sarah for being barren. God only showed a snap shot of their lives together, the moments he felt needful to record. Even through the bad decisions and lack of faith ,they had to have love and respect for one another. I’m not sure but when Sarah died it says Abraham wept ,first recording of anyone crying over another. Even through their lack of belief, God was right there to encourage them and let them know he did not need their help to accomplish it.Same as God does with us. More so he sent a permanent reminder his son and the spirit inside us.
Also I think Sarah is the only women who’s age was given of how long she lived. Gives you a long history of marriage that’s for sure,they must have done right things as well.They seemed to discuss things together and mutally agreed in their unbelief planning!!!
Divorced will be a civil/legal “easy” solution, for Abram, still they were blood related; their shared DNA was needed to conceive Ysaach.
I can see Sarai trying to do things right and not being able to feel His presence.
Yah talked to pharaon to release her back to Abram and take her away from Egypt.
Yah talked to Hagar to return and submit herself to Sarai.
Yah talked to Abraham giving him the timeline to conceive Ysaach… What about me Lord said Sarah? When are you gonna talk to me?
Maybe she could not see the forest for the trees. She could not see Yah’s hand of protection and His presence in her life.
Maybe not so quick. There are hints in the text that after the sacrifice of Isaac, Sarah and Abraham were NOT living in the same place. In fact, it appears that Abraham did not see her until her death. There are a lot of Jewish stories about this as well. Maybe the strain and mistrust finally took over and she left him
I’m reading this a day late. The final footnote about Mary… As I read my thought was, Mary had Elizabeth’s example in the here and now to help her remember the Sarah story. And three months, perhaps, with Elizabeth to share and compare. And thank you Laurita, Robert, and Larry for your vulnerable insights.