Source: Spill The Beans Issue 16

Often times humanity can cry without ceasing.
Other times people can laugh uncontrollably.
And still many more times the business of life
can have the knack of sweeping us along on a sea of emotion,
sometimes troubled and sometimes still.

How can it be, Lord?

All these things that we read in the Scriptures:
the incidents of mystery and wonder?
The encounters of miracle and marvel?

Children born to virgins,
children born to pensioners,
children born in dramatic circumstance
after dramatic circumstance?
Is it factual?
Is it symbolic?
Is it metaphor for something else?

Like Sarah, I don’t always now whether to laugh or to cry.
My reactions range from keeping my mouth shut
to blurting out questions and comments
that only show my disbelief.

And then I rejoice that I don’t need to know it all.
I find joy in the un-knowing and in the not needing to know.

So I just rest in your sacred presence,
sheltered under holy, loving, caring wings.
Though life can be a tangled web,
I rest in knowing God spins and weaves the threads.

I laugh inwardly and I laugh out loud.
I giggle like a child in the face of life’s wonder,
content to be part of a great big enigma,
sometimes troubled and sometimes still.

God is God.

I am me.

Let it be.

Source: Spill The Beans Issue 16

This prayer is one that you might like to use every day this week, perhaps it’d be a great prayer to start every day.

How good are you at sums, O God? 
How many people do you have 
when you have two people
and no children?
Add three guests
and a lot of laughter and 
we have a number bigger 
that the number of stars 
in the sky.

How good are you at sums, O God? 
From small beginnings
you can make whole nations.

May you be able to count on us, 
small though we are,
to make big changes
in the world
as we follow you.

A monologue by Sarah, to follow the reading.
Source: Spill The Beans Issue 16

So I laughed. 
Yes, I laughed 
when I heard. 

Laughing was my default reaction after all those years. 
It’s what everyone told me to do. 
Look for the things that make you laugh. 
Find the things that bring a moment’s lightness, a brief respite. 
God knows I needed those moments. 
And yes, I found them. 
I learned to forget, 
to step outside the guilt and the pain, 
to be lost in the fleeting respite, 
caught up in the wonder of the spring rain, 
the flowers in the desert, the

look in my husband’s
eyes, those rare times
he still gazed at me with
love and not pity.

For long years, laughter never failed me. I
could even turn it on
as I watched all the mothering around me, 
other women’s children taking their first steps, 
running into my arms 
while they were still too young 
to understand my shame.

Did I trust God’s
laughable promise? Did

Abraham trust, even
as he fell into sardonic
mirth when he heard
the first time? 

Of course
we sat down and looked at it seriously.
If it’s God’s promise, I reasoned, I’ll cope, 
even with Hagar’s belly swelling. It all made sense. 

And then I laughed. 
I laughed at myself when no-one could hear me. 
Who was I kidding? 
How would I cope? 
How did it make sense? 
What was God doing? 
What had I done wrong?

It all happened so easily for her. 

Abraham loved the boy
his boy
and I saw the joy in him 
that I had never been able to bring. 
It was too much. 
I called on the laughter but it would not come. 
I searched for it in the winking stars, 
in the smell of good soup, 
in the faces of friends, 
but it would not come.

It came with the visitors’ news. 
The cakes were baking 
and I was dusting the flour from my hands 
when I heard them speak my name. 
How did they know my name, 
and why care to speak of me? 

“Sarah shall have a son”. 
They heard me laughing, 
and would not let me deny it! 

Praise God, 
nor was there any denying the pleasure, 
or the promise, 
or my pregnant old body, 
or the tears of joy in my husband’s eyes 
when we held our son. 

What did we name him? 

We named him Laughter.