Laughter

God has a sense of humour. God likes to create humourous situations, and likes us to laugh at them. Someone once defined a sense of humour as that wonderful human faculty that enables us to laugh at other people’s misfortunes. But God’s sense of humour is not like that. He never makes fun of the misfortunes of others, nor is His humour ever deprecatory (meaning ridiculizing ourselves or others).

God’s comedy expresses the confidence that things will turn out for the best, even though it looks like this is highly unlikely. God’s humour likes to surprise us, likes to interpose His providence over rationally or humanly impossible situations, and then He enjoys our amazement. Let’s look at a few examples in the Bible where God has worked in seemingly impossible situations.

Noah’s ark is one of the times God had to be laughing. Then look at Moses, a man guilty of manslaughter leads the people to freedom, he is involved plagues of frogs and other creatures worshipped in Egypt. He leads the way in the splitting of the waters first to allow the Israelites to pass and then to drown the Egyptians. God had to be laughing when He sent a boy against a giant (David and Goliath), had a virgin give birth to the Messiah and used a small band of ordinary people to change the world. Many times though we are skeptical and our laughter is one of disbelief, of cynicism when we are confronted by situations that challenge our rationale and good judgement.

I have a personal testimony, regarding the purchase of Lexicon house. The Lord said, buy this house. We had enough money for the down payment so we put down $7,000 earnest money, with 30 days to complete the transaction. We needed financing for the balance of the price. I applied for a loan at 2 banks, but I was 61, too old for life insurance. So I applied in my son Paul’s name, he was young enough but his income was too low. The days were ticking by, and my earnest money was growing wings. Just before the 30 days were up, Paul's mother-in-law asked if they knew of a good investment for some money she had. It was exactly the amount we needed! I still laugh today when I remember the situation I was in, but the Lord knew what He was doing.


Gen 17: 15-21: God also said to Abraham “As for Sarah, your wife…I will bless her and give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Abraham fell face down; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man 100 years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of 90? Abraham said to God, “If only Ishmael might live under your blessing.” Then God said, “Yes, but your wife Sarah will bear you a son,and you will call him Isaac. I will establish an everlasting covenant with him…
As for Ishmael, I have heard you: I will surely bless him…and I will make him into a great nation. But my covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah will bear to you by this time next year. When He had fin ished speaking with Abraham, God went up from him.

Some time later, Abraham received another celestial visitation, consisting of 3 men. Gen 18:9-14: “Where is your wife Sarah?”, they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he said. Then the Lord said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.”
Now sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. …Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my master is old, will I have this pleasure?”
Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Consider the circumstances:
God had told Abraham that he would establish a covenant with his offspring 24 years earlier, when he was 75 years old. After 11 years, Sarah took her maidservant Hagar to Abraham and she bore him a son, Ishmael. 14 years after that, Abraham was 100 and Sarah 90. Is it a wonder that Abraham laughed? Wouldn’t you have laughed if you were in his sandals? Do you blame Sarah for laughing? Wouldn’t you have laughed?

In our dealings with God, we often work under at least 4 assumptions:

1.We assume that God will work within a certain time frame
When God gives us a promise (or we make a commitment to God), a clock starts ticking. And there’s a certain amount of time we’re willing to wait for God to fulfill His promises:
We wait for a family member to know Christ, we wait for God to heal someone dear to us, we pray for a job or financial relief, we pray for direction in life, etc. When nothing happens for a while, we begin to get impatient. Our ticking clock turns into an alarm clock, and the alarm goes off.

When that happens, we believe that God doesn’t care or can’t deliver. Bitterness sets in.
That’s what happened in the story we just read. Abraham laughed to himself, a skeptical, cynical, maybe bitter, laugh. But we forget God regards time in a different dimension from the way we do. For Him 1000 years is like one day. We are finite and He is infinite. Many times the Lord has had to say to me, “Hey, sit tight. Don’t get ahead of yourself. Don’t take unilateral action. Wait for my timing.”

2.We assume that God’s work is limited to our own abilities
Sarah was old, and way beyond normal child-bearing years. She looked at herself, and saw an old lady of 90, worn out, as she said, and unable to conceive a child. She also saw that her husband was beyond his prime and his ability to conceive was certainly doubtful.

But the Lord pointed out, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” When we look at our own circumstances and see limitations to what the Lord is asking us to do, we need to remember that nothing is impossible for Him. Whether we are discouraged by our lack of abilities or over-confident because of our sense of ability, we are making the wrong assumption if we think ability is the determining or limiting factor in life. If God can make a donkey speak or make stones to cry out “Hosanna”, He can surely do what He wants with his willing disciples.

3. We often walk by evidence, not by faith
Our faith is most often based on the evidence we see in this world, rather than form the promises we have heard from God’s Word. We look for human and worldly support to stimulate faith.

When I was in the process of buying this building, and I ran into the problems I mentioned before, I would wake up at nights and worry. I’ve lost my deposit money, I would think. $7,000 down the drain!

Sarah and Abraham evaluated the evidence they had at hand, and came to a logical conclusion: the same logical conclusion that any of us would have reached after 25 years of waiting: No way this was going to happen!

4.We assume that God’s work is limited to those who never fail Him
Sarah might have laughed because she knew, down deep inside, that she was not worthy of receiving God’s blessing. Like Abraham, who had lied, she too had fallen into disobedience. She doubted God and gave her maidservant Hagar to Abraham to be a surrogate mother for Sarah. And then in bitterness she drove Hagar and her son Ishmael into the wilderness. You see, Sarah was just like us. We call her an Old Testament saint, not because she was perfect, but because she was redeemed from her imperfections by faith. Now listen to how this story ends:

Gen 21:1-7: Now the Lord was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and did for her what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the very time God had promised him. Abraham gave him the name Isaac, and when he was 8 days old, he circumcised him. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born to him.
Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she added, “Who would have thought that I would nurse children? Yet I have born Abraham a son in his old age.” This laughter of Sarah’s was different from the first laughter. This time she joined in to God’s sense of humour. Her laughter was of joy and also she laughed at herself because she doubted before and God overcame.

God is a God of laughter
God’s laughter is not ironic or jeering or bitter. It is not the laughter of scoffing disbelief, or even the self-deprecating laugh of those who are all too aware of their own unworthiness.
God’s laughter is the laughter of the God who is always on time, though maybe by surprise.
It’s the laughter of God who overcomes our limitations.
It’s the laughter of God whose grace overcomes our failures
Nothing is impossible to God
To remind us of these truths, Abraham and Sarah named their son Isaac
Isaac means…laughter!
You might say that we believe in the God of Abraham, Laughter and Jacob!


The Lord wants to give us the eyes of faith to see beyond human possibility. Our hope is not in human possibilities, but in the divine infinite power behind God’s promises. Bright laughter breaks out when God overcomes human limitations and abilities. As it says in Luke 1:37: “For nothing is impossible with God.”

I believe each of us has a list of things that we believe are too hard for God. We think that God cannot change the hardened heart of a loved one who is uninterested in Christ or bring reconciliation in a broken relationship, open the doors to fulfill our heart’s dream, provide the financial resources we need, release us from pain, anxiety or fear, or release us from the lingering pain of heartbreak, jealousy or anger.

QUESTIONS
Are you listening for God’s promises in your life right now?
Are you trusting His timing?
Have you set off an alarm of bitterness that you need to turn off today?
Have you limited God’s powers in your life because you don’t see the resources available?
Have you surrendered your desires and failures to the Lord?

Release your bitterness and let in His joy.