S160P5 – A man by any other name: Isaac
Gen. 17:19-21
Then God said: “No, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Isaac; I will establish My covenant with him for an everlasting covenant, and with his descendants after him. And as for Ishmael, I have heard you. Behold, I have blessed him, and will make him fruitful, and will multiply him exceedingly. He shall beget twelve princes, and I will make him a great nation. But My covenant I will establish with Isaac, whom Sarah shall bear to you at this set time next year.”
Sometimes things have more than one meaning. I know a little girl whose middle name is Joy. She is the second daughter born to that family. Of course, having any child would have been a joy to that couple, and that name would have applied. For this couple, however, that little girl’s birth meant something more specific. Mom’s first pregnancy did not go well, and having a second child was a big risk. This second pregnancy was just as difficult, but that difficulty was nothing compared with the joy of receiving a second healthy child from the Lord. That little girl was not named to remember the struggle of the pregnancy but to rejoice in the birth of another baby girl.
The Hebrew name we translate as Isaac means at its root to laugh. This encompasses many different kinds of laughter. It can be the reflexive chuckle at something funny or an exclamation in disbelief. For Abraham and Sarah, it has many meanings. We know that he laughed in disbelief when God told him that Sarah would bear him a son, and she laughed as well. It is possible that they thought God was quite the joker in suggesting such an outlandish thing. What we know for sure is that having Isaac for his son brought Abraham great joy, and Sarah proclaimed at Isaac’s birth that all who heard her laugh would laugh with her. Arguably, any laughter at the birth of that child would have been in joy and not in jest.
I once heard someone preach this story, and his delivery garnered much laughter. I never heard anyone else present this story in such an amusing way, but his interpretation seemed to ring so true. Even after knowing God’s miraculous ways and seeing them in our lives, we still can respond to him in disbelief when He brings us a promise. This is particularly true when his method of delivering the promise is so different than we would expect or design ourselves. We might laugh in disbelief at first, but we know that we will laugh in joy and praise when God delivers. Father, help change our unbelief and our rigid expectations, that we would take You at your word no matter how unreal it seems.