Less Than Perfect—Broken Men & Women Of The BibleSample

Sarah

Older than dirt. That is Sarah. Her skin hangs like sackcloth, wrinkled and rough. Yet hers is a face that still makes men look, so beautiful it once charmed kings.

You might think her a fool for all the nonstop laughter. Her body shakes with it. But she is no fool, only a woman who can’t stop marveling at what God has done. Though her husband is a hundred years old and she not far behind, she’s pregnant with his child. Who wouldn’t find that funny? Two old sticks kindling a fire!

Sarah laughs again, this time because her baby is kicking. He’s like a little rabbit whose feet thump softly against her belly. It won’t be long before I hold him in my arms, she thinks.

But how does she know it will be a son?

Sitting in a quiet corner of her tent, Sarah thinks back, remembering the bitterness she had always felt whenever she heard other women cluck-clucking because God had not blessed her with children. Surely, they would say, Sarah must have done something exceedingly wicked for God to have closed her womb. 

She will never forget the day that the Lord came calling, promising Abraham, her husband, that she would bear him a son even though she was long past the age of child-bearing. That’s when the laughter began.

Now, on the verge of giving birth, nothing can suppress her joy. When Isaac is finally born she exclaims, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

So it is that despite every misadventure and mistake, Sarah has come to understand the greatness of her God. No matter how impossible the circumstances, he will always have his way, laughing his enemies to scorn.