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Genesis 17: 9-22:
“When Abram was ninety-nine years old, the LORD appeared to him
and said: “I am God the Almighty.
Walk in my presence and be blameless.”
God also said to Abraham:
“On your part, you and your descendants after you
must keep my covenant throughout the ages.
This is my covenant with you and your descendants after you
that you must keep:
every male among you shall be circumcised.”
God further said to Abraham:
“As for your wife Sarai, do not call her Sarai;
her name shall be Sarah.
I will bless her, and I will give you a son by her.
Him also will I bless; he shall give rise to nations,
and rulers of peoples shall issue from him.”
Abraham prostrated himself and laughed as he said to himself,
“Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old?
Or can Sarah give birth at ninety?”
Then Abraham said to God,
“Let but Ishmael live on by your favor!”
God replied: “Nevertheless, your wife Sarah is to bear you a son,
and you shall call him Isaac.
I will maintain my covenant with him as an everlasting pact,
to be his God and the God of his descendants after him.
As for Ishmael, I am heeding you: I hereby bless him.
I will make him fertile and will multiply him exceedingly.
He shall become the father of twelve chieftains,
and I will make of him a great nation.
But my covenant I will maintain with Isaac,
whom Sarah shall bear to you by this time next year.”
When he had finished speaking with him, God departed from Abraham.”
The Word of the Lord.
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Perhaps one of the most nerve-racking periods in a married couple’s life is when the wife first becomes pregnant.
Everything about their relationship changes; they are no longer two, but three. Perhaps a home office is painted powder blue; onesies and diapers are purchased in anticipation; sleeping habits are disrupted; finances are stretched.
Then there are the changes a woman experiences physically. Allowing another human being to grow inside her body is almost miraculous.
Enduring a nine-month pregnancy is not for the faint of heart.
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Imagine being Abraham and Sarah in our first reading. They’re preparing to become first-time parents at an age when most of us would be retired…or somewhere over the rainbow!
Sarah is old and frail. Naturally, Abraham asks God, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Or can Sarah give birth at ninety?”
God’s promise seems so absurd that Abraham literally laughs out loud.
That slow, nine-month period of Sarah’s pregnancy would’ve been no less stressful for Abraham and Sarah than it is for a married couple today. Only they didn’t have the science, the medicine, or the technology that we do.
Once she conceived, Abraham and Sarah simply had to trust that her body – and the baby growing within – would endure to the end.
***
Though most of us – perhaps none of us – are pregnant, we’re all in different periods of waiting.
Some of us are waiting for a prayer to be answered; a door to be opened; a temptation to subside. Once we ask the Lord to help us, a seed is planted. A promise is made.
“Whatever you ask for in prayer with faith,” Jesus says, “you will receive.”
***
Unlike Abraham, who laughed at God’s promises, may we continue this day in faith.
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Image credits: (1) The Funny Old Man, Pinterest (2) Portrait of Patriarch Abraham, Guercino (3) The Heaton File, God Made Her Laugh