(If you’re thinking- “One chapter. I bet Lacy’s post will be short today.” You have vastly underestimated my powers. 😉)
We have to say goodbye to our wonderful mother of faith, Sarah. A lot is (rightly) made of Abraham as the “father of faith.” Let’s take just a moment to appreciate Sarah.
“By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised.” Hebrews 11:11 NASB2020
“Listen to me, all who hope for deliverance— all who seek the Lord! Consider the rock from which you were cut, the quarry from which you were mined. Yes, think about Abraham, your ancestor, and Sarah, who gave birth to your nation. Abraham was only one man when I called him. But when I blessed him, he became a great nation.”
Isaiah 51:1-2 NLT
“Your adornment must not be merely the external—braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry, or putting on apparel; but it should be the hidden person of the heart, with the imperishable quality of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is precious in the sight of God. For in this way the holy women of former times, who hoped in God, also used to adorn themselves, being subject to their own husbands, just as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord; and you have proved to be her children if you do what is right without being frightened by any fear.”
1 Peter 3:3-6 NASB2020
– incidentally, for my married gal readers, you can go online to https://establishedtitles.com and buy a wee plot of Scottish land which will confer the right for your hubs to legally have the title Laird or Lord. Do with that what you will. 😏
Most of Genesis 23 is Abraham doing a rather formal bit of business over purchasing a piece of land for the family plot. There’s a lot of bowing, deferring, and courtesy. Eventually they settle on the price of 400 shekels of silver which I looked up on the free online conversion tool below and found out it was roughly $70k.
https://testamentpress.com/ancient-money-calculator.html (Save a shortcut for future reference. You’ll need it more than you think. You’re welcome. 🤓)
Notice how chill these guys are about $70,000, “what is that between me and you?” Apparently not much. Abraham was a very wealthy man. The locals, “the sons of Heth,” refer to him as a “Prince.” The 2020 edition of the NASB has a footnote that says the estimated weight of silver was “about 12.5lbs or 5.7kg.” And he weighs it out on the spot. Abraham came ready to buy; probably with a chest or two of silver coins.
Last year on Facebook Marketplace I saw my dream car. It was a classic Mercedes roadster. Black. Convertible. 😎
The seller made it very clear that he was not giving “joy rides.” If you were going to bother him at all to see the car, you better be serious, “have your money and your wife’s approval” the ad said. 😆 I seriously considered getting that car until I realized 1. how powerful the engine was (people race them!) and 2. (the absolute deal-breaker) it got about 11mpg. My brother told me, “That’s what you call a ‘Sunday car.’ You cruise around in it on Sundays and keep it in a garage the other 6.” My car-buying budget allowed for either 1 Sunday car and a secondhand bicycle OR 1 daily driver. Older and wiser is not very thrilling but it beats getting groceries in the rain on a bicycle. 😆
Abraham could’ve bought a Sunday car. Or camel. He wasn’t there to “kick the tires” on this property. He was a serious buyer. He was a name-your-price buyer. Did you wonder why? Why is this spot so important? You do realize what this piece of real estate is, right? Allow me to assist…
“So Ephron’s field, which was in Machpelah, which faced Mamre, the field and the cave which was in it, and all the trees which were in the field, that were within all the confines of its border, were deeded over to Abraham as a possession in the presence of the sons of Heth, before all who entered the gate of his city.” Genesis 23:17-18 NASB2020
Mamre. Field. Trees. Ringing any bells yet?
Mamre was a man before it was a place. And he was Abraham’s friend and brother-in-arms.
“Then Abram moved his tent and came and lived by the oaks of Mamre, which are in Hebron; and there he built an altar to the Lord.” Genesis 13:18 NASB2020
You can start in Genesis 12 and count the altars that Abram builds. This is #4. Abram moves here after he and Lot separate. Then when Lot and family are captured by the 4 armies of Chedorlaomer…
“Then a survivor came and told Abram the Hebrew. Now he was residing by the oaks of Mamre the Amorite, brother of Eshcol and brother of Aner, and they were allies with Abram.” Genesis 14:13 NASB2020
We get the added details that Mamre was an Amorite, and that he had two brothers and they all joined forces to help protect each other. These three brothers and their servants went with Abraham to rescue Lot. They fought side-by-side. Abram has history here.
But that’s probably not what made the field of oaks so special to Abraham.
Remember this?
“Now the Lord appeared to Abraham by the oaks of Mamre, while he was sitting at the tent door in the heat of the day. When he raised his eyes and looked, behold, three men were standing opposite him; and when he saw them, he ran from the tent door to meet them and bowed down to the ground,”
Genesis 18:1-2 NASB2020
Remember what happened that day when God came for dinner? It’s when Sarah laughed.
This place- this few acres of field scattered with shady oak trees is where God promised Abraham’s beloved Sarah that she would be a mother. Having a child was the mark of respect for a woman in the ancient world. It’s why Hagar turned up her nose at Sarah. She might be a slave but at least she had the ability to conceive.
I wonder if there came a point in Sarah’s life where she stopped laughing. I wonder if her smiles were brief and thin and tight. If she lost the ability to smile with her eyes. With her heart.
It’s not easy to keep believing when all hope is gone. Hope is like a little coal. You can blow on it when it is young and see it glow cheery and bright. But as its light begins to fade, we might bank it within a pile of ashes and peek in on it every so often to keep it protected; hoping to extend its life.
Sarah might look out her tent door and see any number of servant women with swelling womb or children hanging onto skirts. But not her. Why? Is she not faithful to YHWH?
Maybe I misunderstood the promise. And Ishmael did not fill that emptiness. Made it worse, actually. What once seemed likely, then unlikely, then highly improbable has now objectively moved into the realm of impossible. At some point, the human heart lets the coal go out entirely. And our core grows a little colder. Harder.
“Laughter can conceal a heavy heart, but when the laughter ends, the grief remains.” Proverbs 14:13 NLT
But in the field with oak trees, God visited…
“Where is Sarah, your wife?” the visitors asked. “She’s inside the tent,” Abraham replied. Then one of them said, “I will return to you about this time next year, and your wife, Sarah, will have a son!” Sarah was listening to this conversation from the tent. So she laughed silently to herself and said, “How could a worn-out woman like me enjoy such pleasure, especially when my master—my husband—is also so old?” Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, ‘Can an old woman like me have a baby?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return about this time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah was afraid, so she denied it, saying, “I didn’t laugh.” But the Lord said, “No, you did laugh.” Genesis 18:9-10, 12-15 NLT
I think a quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice In Wonderland is appropriate here:
Alice laughed. ‘There’s no use trying,’ she said. ‘One can’t believe impossible things.’
I daresay you haven’t had much practice,’ said the Queen. ‘When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.
I don’t think God was angry at Sarah. She just needed some practice at believing impossible things. As in most cases, God’s questions are rhetorical. When a mom sees her kid’s shoes in the middle of the floor, standing where they ought not like the Abomination of Desolation- she asks the kid, “Where are your shoes?” She is not gathering information. The purpose of the question is to make the one questioned realize something.
“Why did Sarah laugh? Why did she say, ‘Can an old woman like me have a baby?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord?”
Why is that so funny, Sarah? The Lord implies that the reason she laughed is because it was all just too stupendous. Impossible. That was the problem the first time when Sarah came up with the idea of sort-of-surrogacy. I don’t think she seriously thought the Lord would do a miracle on that scale. For her.
I think there are parallels here with another famous birth prediction:
“But Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; for that reason also the holy Child will be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth herself has conceived a son in her old age, and she who was called infertile is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Luke 1:34-37 NASB2020
When the Almighty asks you, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” The correct answer is, “No.” No miracle, no matter how statistically impossible, is off the table.
Just for funzies… here’s a link to the song Impossible from Rogers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. This is the one with a very young Julie Andrews, though I enjoy the ones with Leslie Ann Warren and the soulful one with Whitney Houston too. The lyrics are brilliant. And honestly- before you roll your eyes and say, “C’mon, Lacy. Cinderella? That’s a fairy tale.” Let me remind you that a barren woman having a baby after menopause at 90 years old is on par with the usual fairy tale wishes like pumpkins becoming coaches, mice becoming horses, marrying the Prince, and comfortable shoes made of glass.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Perhaps the Lord turned to look at Sarah as He asked “Why did Sarah laugh?”
Sarah: “Well, technically, I didn’t laugh. Out loud.”
God: (eyes twinkling) “oh contraire… That was laughter.”
That silent spark and leap within your core was joy daring to escape. You just forgot what it felt like. You got used to tamping it down because the disappointment that always followed became too great. Allow me to reintroduce you to faith. Let me rekindle the dead ember of hope in your soul. You can let yourself smile again. Really smile. You are allowed to laugh again, to rejoice. If the Lord has promised you an impossible thing, let yourself believe Him for it.
THIS is where Abraham lays Sarah to rest- at the place where she pulled her hope out of the ashes and let it be relit. Where the Almighty restored her joy. Where her laughter returned. In the shade of the oak trees where God showed up in human form, ate with them, and where Abraham got to see his wife truly radiant with the dawning of realization that she would finally, finally be granted the long-awaited hope.
“By faith even Sarah herself received ability to conceive, even beyond the proper time of life, since she considered Him faithful who had promised.” Hebrews 11:11 NASB2020
💖
And here’s a closing song from Phillips, Craig, and Dean to bless you. Randy Phillips shared the story behind this song.
A heart surgeon had just completed a long and complicated surgery on a patient. During the surgery the heart had been stopped and the blood artificially pumped so they could do the procedure. Then they reconnected the patient’s heart to the arteries and veins and did whatever the protocol was to restart it. But it didn’t start. Another try. Nothing. They only had a few moments before the patient would reach a critical point. The surgeon leaned over to the unconscious man and spoke in his ear. He called him by name and said, “The surgery has been successful. I need you to tell your heart to beat again.” And instantly, the man’s heart began to beat.
To The Reader 