Abraham And Sarah: The Laughter Beyond Their Laughter

Abraham, with Sarah still standing by his side, watched Isaac drifting off to sleep. It was the eighth day of Isaac’s life–the day of his circumcision. Abraham sighed, recalling how difficult it had been for him to hurt Isaac with the knife that honored God by sacrificing his son’s foreskin–the offering to God of the flesh that crowns, conceals, and protects the manly organ of procreation.

Isaac’s pain–ebbed away. The blood from the cutting–stanched. The wounded flesh–cleansed and soothed.

Now only sleep covered the face of their son, and, for a moment, a trace of a smile.

Look, Sarah, said Abraham softly, already Isaac is starting to laugh.

Yes, Sarah said in hushed tones, God has made laughter for me, and everyone who hears of Isaac’s birth will laugh with me.

And they will laugh with me, too, chuckled Abraham. For God knew that I felt laughter when he declared to me that you would give me a son.

Abraham paused, turned, and faced Sarah. He let his eyes sink into the accepting embrace of her eyes, losing himself in the warm depths of their encircling trust.

His insides seemed to dissolve into hot liquid salt: Abraham became a single tear filled with the sorrow for all his betrayals, the sorrow for all his self-deceptions, the sorrow for all his half-truths, and the sorrow for all the prideful hesitations and willful misdirections he had chosen as tactics to save his own skin–instead of obeying the commanding voice of God.

Abraham could not contain the agony of his sorrow–the single tear that he was–he had to weep. But to where or to whom was he to pour out his soul-rending sorrow? Then he saw the place–Sarah. Yes, she was the place to offer his sorrow-laden heart–his special place: Sarah grounded him in his son, Isaac, giving Abraham a position–a real position, a father, located in real flesh, his son–in God’s plan and promise, and she wedded him to the intimacy of their face-to-face love, a love that invited him to look into the transparent and unguarded eyes of his wife, with the hope that he would find somewhere beyond her gaze the affirming eyes of God.

Sarah was Abraham’s wife, now more than ever, the woman who knew how to make marriage holy through sacrifice and service to God. And to Abraham’s surprise, Sarah was smiling, a smile of such joy-filled mercy that, in a single releasing instant, he let go of his sorrow, and his jaw fell open at what his eyes beheld.

It was Sarah’s lips: They seemed wet with all the sorrow of that single tear that had filled all of Abraham. Her lips were wet–but not soaked. All of Abraham’s sorrow could not saturate and swallow up the depths of joy rising from the smile alive on her lips.

Sarah’s smile was on her face, yet her smile–the smile–appeared to belong to someone else and to be coming from a place beyond her, a smile so blessed in its boundless joy that it easily absorbed all of Abraham’s sorrow.

Abraham smiled as he beheld Sarah’s mouth, gazing on her smile, amazed by how her lips met in the corners of her mouth, corners that were shaped like holy arches, exalting and ecstatic, pointing toward heaven.

Abraham looked up, searching for the source of this smiling joy, and as his eyes scanned the vaulting expanse of the inviting sky, he felt a tickle in his throat. He cleared his throat. The tickle grew stronger, dancing through him like a feather on the wind.

He felt like a child playing with a father, a father who delights in saying ‘coo-chee-coo’ as he bonds his son to the boundless grace of fatherly love. Abraham giggled. God was tickling him, calling him to live beyond the serious boundaries of manly duty, to frolic in His Almighty presence, to laugh, once again, in that place where a grown man remembers that he is a child–of God!

Abraham’s eyes caught sight of Isaac, the child whom God had named “he laughs,” and Abraham said to Sarah, You are right. God has made laughter for us, the words ‘laughter for us,’ as they were being spoken by Abraham, tickled him into erupting laughter.

Abraham fell into Sarah’s arms, his body rippling with laughter. He felt the adventurous squeeze of her arms, and heard the squeal of her pleasure. And he began rollicking in his laughter, the peals of laughter rising from inside him in waves, lifting him beyond the place where words are gathered to make appeals, lifting him to where words are sacrificed to laughter, to where laughter is the music created in a man from the sounds of inner idols being broken.

Still laughing, Abraham reached down and picked up Isaac, and, tenderly rocking him in his arms, with his eyes Abraham gestured to Sarah to join him. Together, laughing, they swung Isaac to and fro, lifting him up, toward heaven, then lowering him, nestling him close to their breasts.

Then without any prompt from one another, an unvoiced plan arose in them, animating them to act as one: Together they gently laid Isaac in his cradle.

During the remainder of the night, Abraham and Sarah watched Isaac sleep. Neither Abraham nor Sarah spoke a word or uttered a sound.

Abraham and Sarah beheld Isaac, and in the silence of what they experienced, they realized that God had made Isaac laughter for them, not as a way to mock their laughing at God’s promise that He would give them a son, but as a way for them to see the living proof of God’s    promise–Isaac, the birth of laughter in their lives–the laughter beyond their unbelieving laughter–God’s laughter: The glorifying sound of new faith being birthed from the dead silence of doubt.