Sarah, holding Isaac

Genesis 21:6-7

6 Sarah said, "God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me." 7 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."

O Lord, if this moment never ended I would be content! I want to cling to the presentness of what I see, to never move my eyes from this child, my Isaac. There is an aching as the moments pass by, not from any dilution of the joy of it, but from the knowledge that they are passing, that I cannot have them forever!

This sweetness, this dearness, this joy. This half-laughing half-crying emotion, incomparable. This is mine. I have brought it forth for my husband, it springing naturally from our union, love producing life, intimacy reproducing itself, our flesh creating new flesh, new life, this precious thing, squirming in my hands, independent from me yet a part of me, a will given him uniquely, a spirit animating what once came from me, my body, our love creating newness!

He is so beautiful. He is so precious. He is so unique. (Laughter breaking forth) What women has not thought such things! But now it is my turn to say it and think it, and I will not be denied my heritage (more laughter), since it came from Eve has not every woman longed for this? We are created, not just physically but intrinsically, soul and self, for this moment, and it is our crown, our glory! From us comes life, from us the salvation of men! (laughter) O Lord, your mysterious words indicate something deeper for this particular child, but still every woman has given some part of themselves to this great act, this great enlargement, creation of new life, an act in which God himself took part and is therefore blessed, holy, beautiful in itself and good in itself.

This I was long denied.

O Lord, you alone have seen all the tears of barren women. You alone can understand and comprehend the pain of it. I have heard that in the cities there are women who embrace this infertility, who take a perverse pleasure in it, freed as it were from the obligation of childbearing, they claim control over their lives, independence from any responsibility. In its essence this is no different from what Eve did in the garden, taking her independence, liberating herself from her created obligation to her husband, speaking to the serpent and acting out of her deceived understanding. No, barrenness is no blessing but one of the chief signs of the curse. It gives women not independence (what freedom can there be except in what God created us to be?) but makes her less than a woman, incapable of being what a woman was meant to be, a living reality that pained me every time I walked through our tents and saw the women of my master's household, each of them delighting in the children of their quickened wombs. A pain, a longing, an ache.

Women of course exist before you as men do, moral creatures responsible to you for our actions, able to comprehend you and interact with you according to the promises, drawing near in your mercy with the same holy freedom as men. Women apart from men are created in a certain way, and to not marry is a good thing in itself. But a woman in union with man, joined by the Spirit into one flesh, that is another thing, another purpose of God. To be barren in my love is no gift, it is nothing but a sign that creation is cursed, that a thing designed to function in a certain has been stopped up, blocked halted. This is evil, sadness, regret, mourning, a wickedness in which my heart has played its part.

It is not punishment exactly, that is, I had not earned my barrenness by some deed for which I needed to atone, but rather I was experiencing in general the consequence of an ancient disobedience in which I had participated. This had twisted creation (for in itself the rebellion was a subverting of creation), scarred it, created death in general and in particular. Barrenness was a part of this, the slow-dying hope as year after year passes by, love consummated but never made fruitful. Listen to me, love was meant to reproduce itself, to make living and new! This is the nature of love, to quicken and bubble forth.

(laughter)

And now here it is! The years of my barrenness can be laughed at now, at least, my foolishness in them (a laughter with some regret). I remember the slow descent of hope in my early years with Abraham. What a tender husband he was to me in those days, and what a faithful man to me when some men would have thrown me out of their tent, mocked me, and moved onto a woman who could bring an heir. I have seen it before. But not my master, not even when he had received the mystifying promise that he would be made into a great people. I must admit the pathway which this promise has now taken did not enter my mind when he received it. He believed, and in his faith I lived to and followed his heart where he took us, but it was an abstract faith (that is to say, not really faith), a faith not to be fulfilled, but one which we must fulfill. Thus in the days while he waited patiently, I made a plan. My womb was dead, what could bring it to life again? My hope also was dead, the hope of my womanhood, my hope as created, and therefore the promise must come through a different path, we must cause it, work it, earn what God had said he would create by his own power.

Ishmael is the son of my schemes, the son of our work, the son of faithlessness. As soon as he came forth from Hagar the bitterness in my soul, the long-held bitterness, burst forth and I despised the sight of her and her child. He, perhaps in himself no different from this one I now hold (though each is so unique, what a miracle!), but presenting to me my failure, my emptiness, the hopes of my youth now in dust.

Then I despaired. Oh, my life was largely a pleasant one, possessing as I do such a true and tender master, the wealth with which God has blessed us, even the painful and broken intimacy I shared with my Lord in those days (for in every emotion He met me).

Then, laughter (laughter), oh laughter, laughter so different from that which breaks forth minute by minute as I examine this precious miracle in my arms, this lovely child so connected to my soul. There is a laughter that contains no joy in it, a despairing laughter that is a disbelieving unexpectedness. It is a laughter that pains in a way even as it walls itself up against further pain. It is a defensive laughter, defending against a long-dead hope, a long seared emotion, a memory of pain. I would never have a child. When I overheard that man (you, O Lord!) say he would return in a year to find me with a child, I laughed.

(laughter)

Now I sit here in the full flowering of my hope, in the desire fulfilled which brings forth life, fruit, newness, and deeper than that, further hope of a God who can do such a thing! Remember his words, "Is anything too hard for God?" Who in observation of my story can answer anything but no? Oh, the hope in me recovered itself slowly, first in the embarrassed shock of the moment, than in my moments of meditation slowly growing as I remember the past and God's words, his promises. In a strange way, the destruction of the foul twin cities was a great growth in my hope, confirming as it did the unbreakable words of God, which had been focused on me, spoken promises to me, spoken against my disbelief, in and during my disbelief, creating the faith that I now delight in, or rather, nurturing and growing it past my bitterness and years of disappointment!

Oh Isaac, Isaac, child of my flesh, child of my faith and my master's faith! You are beautiful! May this moment never end!

(laughter)