BRAGADAYJAH 59

God answered Abraham’s prayers for Abimelech, as indeed he must, for it was God himself who told Abimelech that if he returned Sarah to him, Abraham would pray for him. So Abraham prayed, God answered, Abimelech was healed, and his wife and maidservants, whose wombs God had stopped up, were allowed to conceive. This is one more piece of convincing evidence that God is in control; that he knows the beginning from the end. The fact that Abimelech’s household were all barren was entirely within the will of God. So now the Lord visited Sarah, and did unto her as He had promised. God’s promise to an old woman that she would conceive and bare a son was no longer a laughing matter; for Sarah did conceive, and Sarah did bare a son whose name was called Isaac. And Abraham when Isaac was eight days old circumcised him as God had commanded him to do. Now Abraham was a hundred years old at the time of Isaac’s birth, which means Sarah was then ninety years old. Sarah herself could not help mocking herself at the timing of the birth of her son Isaac. “God has made me to laugh, so that all that hear will laugh with me. Who would have believes it? Who would have believed that an old woman such as I would be suckling a child”, Sarah emoted. Sarah was clearly a woman of great wisdom and possessed of a great sense of humor. One could well imagine the spectacle of a ninety year old woman giving suck to a baby. So Sarah did not sit back and allow the younger woman to laugh at her. She laughed at herself; therefore, there was nothing left to laugh at. Today they would call Sarah’s strategy, reverse psychology; but in any age, it was likely to work. More