We Laugh
Date: September 8th, 2024
Canvas: 24” x 30”
Cost: $300
Abraham fell facedown; he laughed to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old?” –Genesis 17:17
Through the story of Abraham, Doug spoke about how God transforms our life of well intentioned (“helpful”) pragmatism with all of its tragic fruit into a life of awestruck abandon that bears heavenly fruit. Abraham believes God’s promise to make him the father of a nation, but laughs when God declares that Sarah, almost 90, will be the mother. Sometimes, I laugh in disbelief when God tells me ‘get your brushes, I’m going to give you another image.’ And like Abraham fathering Ishmael with Hagar out of his own pragmatism, I have the impulse every time to rush ahead and paint my own image instead of waiting for his.
So, while I waited I remembered…oh yeah!...a friend of mine had just had a baby several days before…of course!…the focus today is the birth. Then, I remembered the part in Genesis where, “Abram traveled through the land as far as the site of the great tree of Moreh” (Gen. 12:6), so I formed the figures’ arms into the shape of a tree with Isaac (meaning ‘laughter’) as the ‘fruit.’ I realize now this tree element helps convey God's ‘ridiculous’ promise for us to participate in his fruit bearing miracle. It’s through our trust and obedience, like with Abraham, that he births many spiritual newborns through us. And, though on Earth we can’t hold them all at once, I believe at Heaven’s sunrise we will all gather around to lift up the first ‘newborns,’ then every newborn’s newborn (and so on…) to form the vast array of branches of Jesus’s body–our Tree of Life–a miracle so wild we laugh with joyful tears!
Sarah Said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.” –Gen. 21:6-7